


Sing for Me

by ashbel



Category: No Fandom, Vocaloid
Genre: Androids, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Music, It's not technically vocaloids but they're kinda like vocaloids, Love/Hate, M/M, Music, Musicians, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Singing, Slow Build, Slow Burn, UTAU - Freeform, hatefucking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashbel/pseuds/ashbel
Summary: Fed up with a music industry where Idoloids - singing, dancing androids made for their craft - have all but replaced flesh and blood vocalists, Izaki Jun has come close to giving up his job as a music composer. He's haunted by the memory of his boyfriend's beautiful voice, and he knows the machines will never compare. But when a colleague contacts him for just one job writing music for a new Idoloid, Jun is forced to take it - if only because he needs the money.But what will he do when he finds that the artificial singer's voice sounds... disturbingly familiar?
Relationships: Original Characters - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. The Voice in a Dream

“Jun… Jun, please… _god!”_

“Is it too much?”

“No, please don’t stop… I need you. I need this so much. Jun…”

He talks during sex. Begging. Pleading. Sometimes relaying the sensations raging through his body as I fuck him. Sometimes saying nonsense, nothing that matters. I never stop him. I never ask him to be quiet. I barely interrupt. His voice is beautiful, enveloping me, caressing me when his hands are too busy clutching the sheets. Cries in countertenor. Alto when he climaxes. It’s the only time he’ll lay his hands on me if I’m on top, arms climbing my back and clutching as much of me as he can as he succumbs to the ramming of his prostate.

He slips from me and falls back onto the pillow when his muscles loosen. His breathing is hard, punctuated by soft moans here and there, his skin shimmering with sweat. Some of it’s probably mine. I only pull out of him when his thighs unclamp from my hips. Before I let myself join him, I grab one of our shirts from the floor and mop the spill from our stomachs. 

“Jun… don’t,” he breathes. “Lie down.”

“I’m still kind of a mess,” I tell him.

“I don’t care… Come here…”

I can’t refuse him. I lay at his side and stroke the soft, dark hair from his sweat-damp forehead. His lips are flushed, cheeks pink, lashes wet and sticking together. He’s been weeping. Sex is a distraction. 

Pale blue eyes open, watch me as if to check that I’m not leaving. I don’t. But the tears come back anyway.  
“I don’t want to find out,” he says. “I don’t want to know.”

“It’s going to be fine,” I whisper. I kiss his forehead, his cheek, his mouth. “You’re going to be fine, Kai.”

“But if I’m not…”

“Not an option.”

He presses fingers over my lips. Tears repave the tracks on his face. “I want my voice to be the only one you hear in your bed, Jun. The only voice telling you _I love you.”_

“It will be. You’re right here with me.”

“I… love you so much, Jun… I’m so sorry…”

“Stop. You don’t have to be. I love you, Kai.”

“I’m sorry… so sorry…”

I woke up from the dream in a cold sweat for the hundredth time. The sheets stuck to me like peeling skin. I combed my hair back with my fingers and found my hand soaked. 

Fuck.

Fifteen minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. I didn’t know why I even set the alarm anymore. My sheets went into the hamper. I’d remake the bed later. Shower now.

The lights in the stark, clean bathroom were far too bright, illuminated way too much of me. The wall-length mirror reflected a man whose muscles had given way to the trace of bones through his skin, whose face would have been called handsome by someone once… Had been called so by someone once. He likely wouldn’t have approved of the sunken shadows in my cheeks or the dark circles under my eyes or the unkempt black hair. But it had been a long time since I’d had to worry about someone finding me attractive. 

I sighed and started the shower, then tapped the radio app on the wall unit. The song that filled the bathroom was a pop mix with a female vocalist - one that I might have enjoyed if not for the too-perfect melody of her voice and the tinny reverb that only I seemed to ever be able to hear in them. I turned the radio off in disgust.

“Fucking _Idoloids.”_

I couldn’t remember the last time I actually heard a human voice on the radio. The machine-replicated vocals might fool other people, but I’d spent too long mixing vocal tracks to be able to enjoy them. I stood in the shower in silence. 

The wall panel sounded off again. Not with music, but with a phone ring. I reached out and tapped the waterproof screen. “Izaki here.”

“Izaki! Need you in the studio today,” said the voice on the other end. Hanagure. He was a producer I worked with. Worked, past tense.

“Uh-huh,” I said to the panel, deciding to focus on washing. “You know I haven’t done shit for you in months, right?”

“Of course! But I’m in a real tight spot, Izaki. I need you. For real.”

“Did you consider the idea that there might be a reason I don’t answer your messages?”

“Man, you’re going to have to stop living in the past at some point. It’s the fucking fifties. Everyone works with Idoloids now.”

I wasn’t going to turn on the visual feed, but I still glared at the panel like Hanagure could see me. “Two years ago you were still working with human singers,” I snapped. “Now, do you have a _warm body_ whose vocals you want me to mix, or are you bringing me in to work on these robots you people claim are already perfect?”

“Don’t be like that, Izaki,” he wheedled. “You’re missing some grand opportunities. I got some up and coming talent who could really use your composition. Ain’t they like using those digital instruments of yours? What’s the diff?”

“The _diff_ is I don’t expect people to have posters of my laptop on their walls or for my mixing board to do record signings. Maybe I would if I threw a wig on it. Think that’ll work?”

“Now, now. These guys are total professionals! You just don’t realize how _sophisticated_ the tech is today. It’s artificial intelligence!”

“If you want me to work with an Idoloid, my answer’s no. I don’t care -”

“Look, Izaki, I really need you to work with him. Just one song. I know you’ve been pressed for work because of this anti-droid thing, but I like you - I’m willing to let you redeem yourself in the industry!”

I was close to hanging up. Hanagure knew how to push me to my absolute limit. But as I shut the shower off and looked around me, I realized I would probably have to take his offer. My rent wasn’t going to pay itself, and the residuals from past work weren’t coming in as steadily anymore as the media moved towards Idoloid fever - and away from living, breathing singers. Away from feeling, thinking, passionate musicians with real voices. Cast aside for the perfection of people-shaped microphones.

“I’ll pay you double the normal rate - plus twenty percent royalties!”

“Thirty,” I grunted.

“Done! I need you here by noon. Just tell the desk what you’re here for.”

And just like that, he ended the call.

I sighed and pressed my face into a towel, already regretting the decision. I hadn’t even asked Hanagure what the project was. Was I going to be composing a whole song for one of these things? Did they expect me to code its vocals? I wasn’t going to do that. 

Need you to work with him, he said. _Him_. A ‘male’ Idoloid. If these things could have a sex or gender.  
They were machines.

Nothing but machines.

I decided if I was going to do this job, I at least wanted a familiar tool in my hands. People on the street kept staring at me as I boarded past, like they’d never seen a guy with a guitar bag on his back. I wondered if one day, analog instruments would die out like human vocalists. My headphones were playing older music. Music where you knew the singer had to breathe between verses. 

People called it robophobia because it was catchy. The real term was automatonophobia. I didn’t use either one - I wasn’t afraid of assembly robots or the bots that processed my train tickets and ate our trash. And to be honest, I wasn’t afraid of the humanoid things that had infiltrated every corner of modern Japanese society.

I wasn’t afraid. I hated them.

But people still called it phobia to denote some kind of racism against artificial intelligence. Discrimination. Could you discriminate against something with no feelings to hurt? No rights to protect? They were trying to pass legislation to decide that. Who knows, maybe these wind-up radios will be able to vote one day.

It’s not a hatred of technology. I’ll use air boards that skim the ground to travel. I’ll put a computer system in every room in my apartment. I’ll use whatever soundboards I have to in order to produce amazing music. But the fact that they had started to build these things to replace - not work alongside, but _replace_ real singers… It disgusted me. There were huge ads on trainstation walls showing them off - perfect, perpetually youthful, never stressed or overworked, able to tour relentlessly and keep singing for as long as their internal battery wore on. They’d built them in every shape from young girl to mature male, but they all had the ability to hit every note imaginable, with the only limit being what sounded good in their sound font. 

And that was the second half of my hatred for them. Their voices didn’t belong to them.

Every Idoloid’s sound font is made from a system that takes samples of a living human’s voice and converts them into a programmable instrument. Some of them had the voice of musicians who partnered to create them, others the programmers themselves… Because it didn’t matter if you were any good at singing. An Idoloid could sing with your voice no matter what you sounded like.

Indiscriminate, perfect thieves. Nothing about them earned the respect and popularity they had. 

So of course I refused to work with them. I’d grown up loving music and idolizing people with beautiful voices, who could use this organ in their bodies to create music more beautiful than any instrument ever heard on Earth. 

People like Kai.

But the Idoloid craze had only really blown up a year or two ago. It was the only saving grace, I thought, that Kai wasn’t around to see the kind of thing that had replaced him. Cold steel and silicone.

The building belonging to Hanahaki Records was exactly the same as the day I left it - glass on all four sides surrounding a central pillar of stone and concrete where the actual studios and meeting rooms were. The only difference was that the Idoloids displayed on enormous posters at the entrance were different models than the ones that had been here last time… Although when your singers are a literal commodity, I guessed they were pretty interchangeable. Did the label even remember the ones who were displayed before? 

I carried my board under my arm as I walked into the lobby. The front desk was pretty much the same, too. Curved steel with a glass top, displaying the label’s name and logo of flowers growing out of a heart... With one big, noticeable difference. 

The figure behind the counter was a smiling girl with large, electric-blue eyes and bubblegum-pink hair in twin buns tied with ribbon. Her stare was unnerving, unblinking and attempting friendliness in a way that wasn’t possible for her. For it. 

When I approached the counter, the android bowed its head and clasped its hands to the bright pink skirt it was wearing. “Welcome!” it said cheerfully. “Are we expecting you today? Please sign into the visitor -”

“Got it,” I interrupted the recorded voice. I tapped my watch against the little screen set into the desk and traced my name onto it with a finger. My image appeared on it for a split second with a little ‘ping’ noise before the device spat out a badge for me. I ignored the android as it welcomed me again and indicated where I was supposed to go. 

The thing at the counter was a service droid, but I saw plenty of figures that must have been Idoloids in the halls on my way up to the studio. Sometimes they were with their human handlers and teams, other times simply sitting by themselves, apparently waiting for an order. Their appearances were all striking and varied - an Idoloid’s primary appeal is its ‘brand’ - but even more varied were their behaviors. Some were completely robotic when they weren’t singing… But some were more convincing in their movements and speech. These were the ones that unsettled me more than anything. Sometimes the only way you could tell was by their outlandish eye colors, and by the lines on their body where the skin was segmented to allow removal to access their insides for maintenance. Beautiful creatures whose faces could be taken apart. 

So I was grateful to finally make it up to Hanagure’s studio space, where there were no Idoloids; just the other men and women who would be working with us on this pet project. Many of them I was familiar with and welcomed me back as if I’d just been on vacation. No one mentioned why I’d left in the first place. I kept conversation short and had them direct me to the side room where Hanagure was supposedly waiting for me.

Hanagure was almost exactly as I remembered him. Obscenely tall even sitting down, a heavyset figure offset by height, ponytailed black hair and thick glasses with tinted lenses to combat the light of the screens he was constantly buried in. When I shut the door behind me, he leapt up, putting a good ten centimeters between our heights, and grinned at me. “Izaki! I was worried you weren’t going to come,” he boomed.

“So long as you make good on what you promised to pay me, I’m here,” I said bitterly. “What do you want me to write? Some basic pop song?”

“Now, don’t be like that,” he said dismissively. “I don’t want just some random composition for him to sing to. What I’d like is for you to listen to Kei and come up with something that really suits him! Make good use of his voice and vibe, you know?” 

I sighed and threw myself into the chair across the table from him, staring past him at the photos on the wall of what I could only assume were more of his pet projects. “ _Kei_ ,” I repeated. “Is that what you’re calling it?”

“It was the name he was given by whoever made him,” said Hanagure, maintaining his cheerful tone. “Designation K.E.1. He’s a rather sophisticated model! His inflection module and toner are much more -”

“It’s a soundboard,” I told him. “As long as I can work it like one, then I don’t care what it sounds like. I’ll try to force something decent out of it. But I don’t know how you want me to decide a personality and sound based on what it _sings_ like. If it’s an Idoloid, it should be able to sing like whatever I want.”

“Oh, I think you’ll change your tune once you hear him,” he smirked. “These newer models definitely have their own persona, Izaki. They’re not just singing keyboards, you know.”

“The harder you work to convince me, the less convinced I am. Fine. Just show me the fucking thing. Do you have a demo tape?”

Hanagure apparently took this as a win. He grinned toothily at me and came around to the door, beckoning me with him. I reluctantly grabbed my guitar case and board, but he said “Oh, leave those there, they’ll be fine! We’ll just give you a sample first.” 

I followed him empty-handed out to the hall and over to where I knew the sound room was. This was a familiar area to me. Mixing boards and devices completely covered the station along one wall, below a large window that was able to be switched between two- and one-way with a button. Everything was what I knew - except what was inside the soundproof room itself. 

On the other side of the large window was a figure I’d never seen before being attended by a human woman. And everything about it made me sick to look at.

The thing was shaped like a young man in every way. Slim body, false muscles making up subtle curvature beneath a loose, slightly translucent shirt that showed off the point at which its waist tapered and minutely flared to its hips. Its legs were long and sturdy, leggings cutting just short of its mid-calves and high-top sneakers. Its head was inclined slightly, and behind the carefully shaped, dark blue hair, its eyes were closed and mouth turned up in a gentle smile as the woman beside it fitted cords and cables into an open port on the side of its head where an ear should have been. She brushed back the long forelock at its temple and said something to it, and the thing lifted its face and looked at her with gleaming silver eyes, which narrowed as its mouth widened and parted with words that looked like those of gratitude. 

Thanking its handler. Mimicking human behavior in mockery of what it would never be. The thing was a machine, no matter what it looked like. 

“That’s it?” I muttered to Hanagure.

“That’s Kei!” he said proudly. “Pretty thing, ain’t he? We expect he’ll be popular with the male and female demographic equally.”

I snorted. “You _want_ a bunch of robophiles jerking off to this thing? Well, hey, if that’s your marketing ploy…”

“Be nice, Izaki.”

“I thought you wanted to show me a demo,” I said. 

Hanagure grinned again. “Well, what better way than for you to listen to him yourself? Unfortunately, it’s a cover of something we had him try out, but he does some fantastic justice to the track.” He reached over and flicked a couple switches on the board, then hit the button on the window so that the one-way filter disappeared. The machine inside turned its empty eyes on us. Hanagure ducked towards the microphone on our side. “Kei! I have a guest who wants to hear you sing. Can we play your demo?”

“Why are you asking for its permission?” I spat. “Just turn the damn thing on.”

The android bowed its head and looked up with a wide smile, drawing its face closer to the hanging microphone. The cables and wires trailing out of the side of its skull pooled on the ground and streamed towards our wall, further cementing the image of this thing as just a giant human-shaped tool. And then it just stood there, eerily still, waiting for a signal.

Hanagure seemed very sure about the machine’s ability to impress me. He was smug as he fidgeted with the last of the dials and selected the track from the feed on our dash. “Just keep listening, Izaki! You won’t be disappointed,” he told me confidently, holding out a headset for me. 

I sniffed and took the gear reluctantly. I knew he wasn’t going to let me out of here until I’d given this stupid thing a try. I fit the headset on over my ears just as the song began to play, something I’d heard clips of on the radio before. Technically and mathematically, the song was a fantastic composition… But the moment these Idoloids began singing over it, my ears were always on fire. 

I found myself watching the machine behind the glass, which had suddenly come to life again. Its eyes were low, lips just barely open, body rocking to the rhythm to keep time in a way it surely didn’t need to - a performance for its watchers, not for itself. And as the first verse approached, it began to bounce lightly on its toes, mouth drifting to the microphone as it opened wide -

And song exploded from its lips.

I felt the first note in the base of my spine where it didn’t belong. My brain disappeared into the first burst of the melody, and it returned with a hyper awareness of every tiny detail of the voice resounding in my head… 

A voice that strained itself with the force of stronger notes.

A voice that trembled with vibrato.

A voice that lilted and burst on the higher peaks.

I watched this thing on the other side of the glass, its face twisted with emotion as it forced out notes too low and too high for any one vocal range, its mouth wide and eyes closed as it held the longer syllables, a slight but unmistakable inhale between lines… Its hands grasped at its own chest, ran themselves down its body for an audience that wasn’t there… Near screaming in a voice that inflected and broke with stolen humanity. 

Stolen.

The voice was raking at me with claws that were not its own. It was being pumped into my ears, flooding directly to my brain as if to dig out every tiny remnant of what it was and rip them apart, to destroy what was left of my memory of it -

The face was not real. Not familiar. Too beautiful, too perfect, too pale and smooth and thin, and each time its eyes opened, the inhuman flash of silver further fueled the nausea that rode up with every note of its ill-gotten tone.

I felt violently sick.

I slammed the headset down on the board and staggered out of the mixing room before Hanagure could protest, vision spinning as I ran.

I stared down into the sink as I held onto its edge for dear life with shaking hands, chest heaving, mindlessly watching the water flush away my breakfast. My entire body was soaked in cold sweat for the second time in a day. I shut my eyes tight and leaned my forehead against the mirror, swallowing. They wouldn’t force me back in there. I wouldn’t look at that thing again. I didn’t care how much Hanagure paid -

Right on cue, he burst through the bathroom door. “Izaki! You okay, man? Gee, I didn’t think you’d hate it THAT -”

“You bastard,” I gasped. “You absolute fucking bastard. You knew.”

“What…? The heck are you talking -”

“You fucking _knew_ ,” I snarled. “Why the fuck else would you call me here? ‘Oh, Izaki, you’ll love this thing, we want you to write a song for it.’ Even its fucking _name_ -”

“Izaki… I got no clue what you’re -”

I rounded on him, my shoulders shaking with anger. It took all my restraint not to hit him in the face with all my might. How could he not know? How could he not recognize that monstrosity for what it was? The words fell from me like acid off my tongue.

_“Why does that machine have Kai’s voice?”_


	2. The Voice in the Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having met the Idoloid who he's agreed to write music for, Jun demands to know why it sounds like his boyfriend. But why is it no one else seems to notice the similarity? And why can no one tell him where the original voice came from? 
> 
> And above all... Can he really work with a machine that speaks with a voice Jun never thought he'd hear again?

“Izaki… I don’t really hear it.”

Hanagure put the headphones down on his desk between us, stopping the song for the second time. I refused to listen again. My muscles were stiff, arms and legs crossed, not allowing my expression to slip below a glare. “You’re deaf,” I grunted. “Play it again.”

“It’s not Kai,” he said. “I mean, it’s similar, yeah, but…”

“Different because it’s coming from a machine? Or maybe you aren’t as familiar with that voice as I am. I still hear it.” I sat up and leaned over the desk, my tone hardening. “I hear that voice every time I close my eyes. I know his voice. I want to know what monster recorded Kai into an _Idoloid!”_

“Kai never submitted himself to the Idoloid program!” said Hanagure. “He would have had to work with the makers. You can’t just take existing recordings and manufacture them… And Kei’s voice font is definitely too sophisticated for it to be made from old tracks.”

“ _Sophisticated,_ ” I muttered. “There’s that fucking word again. Is that what you say when it’s hard to distinguish from a human’s voice or just when the technology is impressive?”

Hanagure shrugged. “I mean, it’s both. You heard him, didn’t you? The technology is _supposed_ to make him sound more human.”

“You know what sounds more human? A _human._ ”

“You agreed to this project before you heard him sing, Izaki,” he said, brow knitting as he wagged a finger at me. “Now, I’ve heard your complaints, but if your hang-up is due to your belief that he sounds too much like Kai-"

“It _is_ Kai,” I growled. My own voice was starting to tremble. “And I want to know how someone could have-"

But I was interrupted by the door cracking open. When I’d twisted in my seat, I saw that the young woman who had been working with the machine was poking her head in, her face softened with worry. “Hanagure-san,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’m being a bother, but… I heard your guest was upset hearing Kei sing, so…”

“It’s fine, Asa-chan,” said Hanagure brightly, waving the hand he’d just been reprimanding me with. “Come in, come in… no bother at all.”

I was about to protest, but the woman called Asa-chan let herself in at Hanagure’s behest… and I had to keep myself from leaping up and shoving her back out the door. She was leading the blue-haired robot by the hand behind her, into the room. 

“When Kei heard he might have upset you, he wanted to apologize,” she explained gently. “Would it be alright if…?”

Beside her, the android listed its head slightly to one side, silvery eyes narrowed in something resembling concern. It looked more human with its ear on, but not natural. 

I gave a derisive laugh and shifted up out of my seat. “That _thing_ wants to apologize? It can’t pretend to know or care how I feel, lady. I promise you that.”

Asa-chan frowned and squeezed the robot’s hand. “Kei is actually very attuned to the emotions of people around him. His AI is highly-"

“-Sophisticated, right?” I finished dryly. “I don’t want to hear it talk. Get it away from me. I mean it.”

“Now, Izaki, won’t you hear him out?” Hanagure needled me. “You’ve got to get along with him, after all.”

“I don’t _have_ to get along with it! It’s a fucking processor with legs!”

Both he and the robot’s handler seemed about to argue, but the machine moved first. I felt unease crawl up my spine as it slipped free of Asa-chan’s hold and approached me, keeping its eyes fixed on mine. Up close, I could see the seams in its face… faint lines following the curve of its cheekbones, dipping under the eyes, and framing the bridge of its slim nose. Its mouth was soft and full-lipped, even bearing a light shimmer as if wet. But the uncanny valley that everyone else seemed to have glossed over was obvious and revolting to me, even if there was no one specific thing I could pin it to. My stomach turned as its mouth opened - but this time it was speech, not song, that came out… And every word felt like knives in my head.

“Izaki-san,” it said softly. “I am sorry that my singing made you upset. Would you like me to do better next time?”

I clapped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes tight. My name was vile in its mouth, in that voice… Hearing it speak was almost worse. The meandering cadence and tone of its words, devoid of the tinny reverb, the halting edge, the things that made the facsimile more obvious - the voice was too close to human, too close to the familiar melody I knew better than any other sound in the world - and yet, coming out of this machine, it sounded like an alien transmission, and the disquiet it brought was enough to make me feel sick again. 

“Iza -”

“Shut up,” I snarled. “I don’t - I don’t want some pre-recorded apology for…” I swallowed and straightened up, feeling my jaw tense as I stared back at this thing in front of me. It wasn’t disturbed by my reaction at all. It just stood there, face artificially placid. Its eyes were too shiny and reflective… Round, glassy domes over irises made of flexing steel-colored fibers that moved like the aperture in a camera lens. It blinked only because it looked inhuman when it didn’t. I may as well have been talking to an electric toothbrush for all it mattered. But I suddenly realized that if Hanagure didn’t have answers, then this thing would. “Are you programmed to answer questions truthfully?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

Hanagure protested. “Now, Izaki, what are you going to gain by interrogating the kid?”

But I ignored him. So did the android, it seems.

“I can answer whatever you ask me to the best of my ability,” it said carefully. “And I will not be misleading or deceitful, if you are worried-”

“Who made you?” I asked sharply. Asa-chan started forward, but I shot her a look. “Let it answer me! Who made you?”

The android blinked again and its mouth turned up in a slight smile. “My designer’s name is Kagami Inoue,” it replied. “I was produced by Snow-Maiden Group and signed to Hanahaki Productions as of -”

“I don’t need that. Who provided your voice font?”

“Izaki! I already told you,” Hanagure argued, “Kai never-”

_“Let it answer!”_

But the android’s manufactured smile had already begun to fade before Hanagure interrupted. Its eyes stayed on me, but even the perk in its cheeks was disappearing. Finally, it said “That data isn’t available to me.”

I crossed my arms. “Try again. What is the name registered as the provider of your voice? I know for a fact you’re programmed with that.”

But the robot was slowly shaking its head, the long locks of blue hair catching on the collar of its shirt. “That isn’t registered in my system, Izaki-san… Forgive me.”

“Liar,” I growled. “Did Adachi Kai provide voice to your company?”

“I don’t recognize the n-”

“ _Whose voice is coming out of you?!_ ” Incensed, my hands found the machine’s cold shoulders and shook, eliciting no response from their owner, whose head bobbed slightly with the movement. 

This time, Asa didn’t let me stop her. She darted forward and wrapped her arms around the android’s shoulders, pulling him back and away from my grasp. “Izaki-san - Kei has nothing to do with that!” she said loudly. “Kei’s voice provider was anonymous. Many Idoloid makers go that route nowadays. He won’t be able to answer you, no matter how much you threaten him. And whoever Adachi is, if they worked with an Idoloid maker, then that’s their choice-”

“He would never have chosen this!” I barked. “Hanagure - you want to pay me to work with an Idoloid, fine. But not this _thing!_ If I have to hear it talk again, I’m going to throw it off the roof. You got me?”

“For fuck’s sake, Iza -”

“Call me again when you’re done fucking with me. And if I find out this thing was made without Kai’s consent, I’m gonna find a way to get every little bit of profit you and its maker have made from it!”  
I shoved my way past Asa and the machine she was holding like a bullied child and stormed into the hall, pulling my guitar bag over my shoulder and ignoring Hanagure calling for me to get back in the office.

With every Idoloid I passed on the way out, the urge grew to rip their heads off and tear the computerized voice boxes from their wire-laden throats.

For the next six days, I made calls and sent messages out to everyone I could find to get answers about the Idoloid with Kai’s voice. The company the machine had mentioned, Snow-Maiden, was small but up-and-coming; “Kei” was apparently part of only their second line of Idoloids, in batches of three, each with one male and two female models. The second line was apparently picked up quicker than the first, after early reviews of a female Idoloid called Mariko (M.R.K.) praised its lifelike voice, fluid movements, and realistic body features. But not a single one of their voice providers was named, and they didn’t respond to any of my attempts to get information on the sound source. Their website actually boasted that they didn’t use professional singers and that the voices were simply supposed to stand out on their own once the machines processed them.

I knew long before I started that there would be no record of Kai ever having mentioned wanting his voice to be used for an Idoloid. He hadn’t hated them the way I do, more felt nothing towards them at all… He’d told me he had never worried about being replaced. But he had also never attained the popularity of Idoloids on his level at the time.

“But that’s all right,” he had said once. “I still don’t think I’d rather be an Idoloid. I kind of feel bad for them, you know… Their songs aren’t meaningful to them. They don’t have a song that comes from inside them like we do. They can only sing what someone else gives them.”

“I write your music, too, y’know,” I had told him.

I remembered his dark eyes gleaming when he smiled back at me. “When you put your music into me, then it belongs to me, doesn’t it? I’m the only one who can sing that way for you.”

I thought about all this as I laid in bed one night, staring at the sliver of illuminated city I could see through the gap in the curtains. I’d been awake for what felt like hours. My already troubled sleep was becoming turbulent and scarce.

Two years ago, I thought I’d never hear him sing again. I couldn’t listen to the albums he had recorded, but it didn’t matter… His voice had been printed into the fibers of who I was. And yet, no one else seemed to be trying to hold onto the song that had disappeared from this world. His fans had mourned, but Kai wasn’t a nationwide sensation. No one outside his following noticed he was gone. I seemed to be the only one still carrying his voice inside of me.

And so I was the only one who seemed to recognize the voice coming from the mouth of that machine. 

Was I really imagining it? Was it just grief that made me hear Kai in that Idoloid? 

No. I remembered Kai perfectly. I’d never mistake another voice for his. 

But Hanagure hadn’t heard the similarity. Or had he already forgotten what Kai sounded like? Worse - did he actually recognize it and lie to me because he didn’t want me to quit the job? 

Would it be paranoid of me to believe everyone was in on it simply to drive me insane?

Or was I actually insane and hearing Kai’s voice in a place it couldn’t possibly be?

Or was it simply a coincidence? Coincidental that this machine just happened to sound exactly, precisely like Kai with none of his vocal pattern, his energy, his spirit…

“Kai,” I heard myself whisper weakly to the darkness. “Please tell me what to do… I just need an answer…”

The silence that replied to me was empty and cold. I couldn’t expect Kai’s voice to suddenly cry out from the ether and tell me what I needed to hear. If I heard that, then I was definitely insane.  
But the longer I thought about the android - because I could never get it out of my head, no matter what I did - the closer I came to a conclusion.

If I didn’t work with the Idoloid, then Hanagure would find someone else to write songs in its voice. And regardless of whether or not it was Kai’s voice font… with the growing popularity of these things, I might soon be hearing that voice echoing in shopping centers and train stations, winding through TV commercials and overproduced music videos… 

And it would drive me insane to be unable to do anything about it.

I agreed to meet with Hanagure at a cafe near my apartment. When I asked him to bring Kei, he was hesitant, but I assured him I didn’t want to take the thing apart. For the most part, it was true. Emptiness had swallowed my anger. 

It seemed as though Kei didn’t need Asa-chan handling it at all times. When I arrived at the cafe, Hanagure was sitting alone with it in one of the booths at the back of the shop. Hanagure appeared to be speaking to it for some reason, but when I approached, the android slipped out of its seat and stood up to greet me. The outfit it wore was almost identical to its previous one, except that the shirt was pale green and hung off one shoulder, and the leggings were a dark indigo patterned with gray. Once I got close enough, it clasped its hands to its legs and dropped its upper half in a deep bow. 

“Izaki-san, I am very sorry that I made you angry last-”

“It’s… fine,” I told it, shifting uncomfortably in place. “Just sit down. I don’t wanna talk about the other day.”

Kei straightened up and nodded with a smile, then moved over to scoot in next to Hanagure so I could sit across from them. 

“Good to see you’re doing better, Izaki,” Hanagure said brightly. He opened the menu screen in the table between us and scrolled through it thoughtfully as he spoke. “Make yourself comfortable… Get a coffee or something, I’ve got you covered.”

I’d been here often enough that I didn’t need to take a look at the menu to know what I wanted, but I caught sight of Kei sitting quietly with its head inclined and hands folded in its lap, as if it was just waiting to be told what to do. It was these moments where the androids were at their most creepy to me… Frozen as if time had just stopped around them. But… There was something different about Kei. And I suddenly realized what it was, and why it hadn’t occurred to me before. The android was still far too stiff and still to appear alive… But there was a subtle and even flection in its shoulders and the sliver of chest that escaped the low collar of its shirt.

“Why is it… _breathing?”_

Both Kei and Hanagure looked up at this. Hanagure glanced over at his mechanical companion. “Huh? Oh. Well, look at that! So he is,” he said cheerfully. “It’s those little details that really enhance his character, don’t you think?”

But Kei seemed to be happy to actually answer. “Parts of me can be susceptible to heat, Izaki-san,” it replied gently. “My systems use a combination of liquid coolant circulation and air cycling to alleviate heat stress. Is this a simple explanation?”

“Ah, so that’s what they meant!” said Hanagure, slapping his forehead. “To think the mechanism is as simple as breathing. They really have thought of everything. Izaki, did you hear about that Idol who collapsed on stage during a performance because she overheated? It was a disaster.”

“I know it’s happened with human idols,” I muttered. “Too bad humans don’t have a liquid coolant system, huh, Kei?”

Kei responded to my sarcastic quip with a smile. “Humans drink water,” it said. “Isn’t it like that?”

The android’s voice was still unsettling to me, but I tried to ignore the sensation it caused in my chest. Before I could reply, a serving droid in a cute apron came over to our table to take our drink orders, then bowed with a flourish of pigtails and walked off without needing to write anything down. I noticed the waitress didn’t even look at Kei, much less ask him if he wanted anything. I guess these machines could tell each other apart from humans as well.

Business didn’t proceed until the serving droid came back with iced coffees for me and Hanagure. “Yes, thank you, thank you - now then!” he said. “I’ve brought the contracts for you to look over… It’s nothing too strict, just terms and agreements for you to write one song for Kei. His demo is good, but we’d like to show the public what he’s really like before his first album debuts, and until we find a composer who can really bring out his persona…”

“You have one.”

“Eh?”

I met Hanagure’s questioning eye and was about to speak… until I realized that Kei was looking at me as well. The android’s eyes were wide and round, a blank expression emulating an almost childlike curiosity that wasn’t really there. But as much as this thing sickened me to be near… I knew I couldn’t let anyone else have control over the voice inside it.

“After this contract, I want you to draft up a new one,” I said. “I want to compose Kei’s first album.”

The machine’s mouth shaped itself into a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all like your sci-fi introspective and existential cuz I sure do.


	3. The Voice in the Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now determined to be Kei's only composer, Jun sets to the task of writing the Idoloid's debut single, but he quickly finds that working with the machine that sings in his boyfriend's voice is harder than he had even anticipated... And he had known it was going to be difficult in the first place.
> 
> And the tension in the studio only grows as he learns just how human Kei is...
> 
> If only in his body.

For the first week back in the studio, I had to familiarize myself with Idoloid programming before I could even begin to write for Kei. I needed to know what the program’s limits were, what it was good for and what it wasn’t, and overall how to manipulate and code a score that the android would convert into vocals… But I was a little put off by the fact that there were barely any limitations at all. Kei could produce any note I gave it, although notes lower than a low D or higher than an F7 were creepy coming out of it. Its Japanese soundbank was the best, but it didn’t sound bad singing words in English, either, although there was a bit more stilting in the syllables depending on the score I used. I ran basic Idoloid scores through it in several genres: rock, J-pop, light music, jazz, even death metal just to see what would happen… And it had no problem singing them all. But Hanagure was right about this, at least; Kei could _sing_ any music I put into it, but the energy and tone of its voice was best when it had a melancholy or ferocious sound to it, and it was even better against the backdrop of hard J-rock. 

But I probably could have guessed that. It was what Kai sang. It was what I wrote for him. 

The Idoloid composition program was an easy enough install beside my existing computer tools, but there was still a slight learning curve. It was less like playing a keyboard and more like trying to replicate the exact notes of a violin, which I had done before with some effort. Basically, it required that you put in the syllables that needed to be sung, then adjusted each one for length, tone, note, inflection, and even the rise and fall at the beginning or end of each. There were modes to add vibrato, to change the force and strain of Kei’s voice, and an entire font for the breaths he took between lines… a feature of more recent models, apparently. The thing could even harmonize with itself in real time, adding another level of creepy to the whole experience. 

After getting a colleague to teach me how to work the program, I tested out a simple composition and got Kei to sing “Happy birthday”. It was a start. Now I just had to actually write this debut single… 

What a pain.

Kei was there any time I was at the studio. I quickly found out this was because it, along with most other Idoloids that Hanahaki Records owned… actually stayed in the building. According to Asa, the protective handler, Kei had a sort of living space set up in a room on the higher floors. She told me this as she escorted it to the studio room I was using and began to help set it up. 

“The fuck does it need an apartment for?” I asked. “No - leave the cords, I’ll do it.”

She frowned at me, crossing her arms. “Well, it’s where his charging station is… All the Idoloids have their own space. Hanagure-san and the higher-ups want to treat their stars properly. They can’t live all by themselves.”

I sighed and glanced over at the android. It was the third time I’d had it set up while I worked; it didn’t bother me a whole lot if it stayed still and kept its eyes shut, and I could at least test some of what I was writing on it as I went. “Well… gotta store the equipment somewhere, I guess.” 

Asa wasn’t happy with this, but she petted Kei’s hair and left me alone with it. The android stared at me with a benign smile. 

I sighed again. “All right. That’s enough of that,” I told it. “Pop your head over. I need to hook you up.”

It tilted its head to the side obediently, allowing me to access the panel around the ear. It was weird how this worked… But I’d watched Asa do it enough to replicate. There were pressure points around the corners of the seams encircling Kei’s ear that would release the panel if pressed together. It kind of just clicked and popped off for me to lift away, exposing the multiple ports in the side of the machine’s head. The hole in an otherwise human-shaped figure gave me fucking chills. Another sigh. “Well… let's get you plugged in, I guess,” I muttered to no one in particular.

Halfway through the process of attaching four different wires to the machine, it spoke, making me drop one of the plugs. “Izaki-san, you’re really gentle when you do that,” it said.

“Fuck - !” I stopped to pick up the fallen cord. “Don’t do that. Scared the shit outta me.” 

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

I clicked my tongue and pushed the next plug into the port a little harder than I meant to. The machine made a soft noise. I blinked. “Hol - wait, can you _feel_ that?”

Kei’s eye rotated in my direction without its head moving. My skin crawled. “I can feel it… yes,” he said. “It feels nice when you’re gentle… like before.”

I shuddered, sighed again, and picked up the last wire somewhat reluctantly. “What kind of fucked-up pervert designed this thing, anyway?”

“Is Kagami-sensei a… fucked-up pervert?”

“Don’t repeat that shit. And be quiet when I plug this thing in.”

I clicked the cable into place. The machine stayed silent, but I couldn’t help noticing a twitch in one of its fingers during the process. Great. I was basically fingering this thing every time I hooked it up to my laptop, apparently. With a final sigh, I sat down at the desk where I had my setup splayed out - laptop, mixing board, keyboard, and my guitar off to the side, all mostly interconnected. While pulling up my project files, I became very aware of the android watching me. 

“I thought I told you last time to shut your eyes when I’m working.”

It did, but it stayed in the same position, face turned towards me. Fuck. That was actually creepier. I reached over and pushed the thing’s head in the other direction. It let me. 

I’d mostly been using the thing to practice and get a feel for its sound and input previously, but… now it was time to actually try and make it sing a little of my composition. It wasn’t a really impressive piece by any stretch, and I hadn’t gotten most of the lyrics written, but now was probably a good time to try it out. With it hooked up, I really didn’t even have to tell it to start… it would pick up automatically when I pushed play on the track. When I did, the guitar intro kicked in and I watched the machine begin to bob its head and tap its foot to the rhythm without my input. Still wasn’t really sure how it did that. 

But when the song finally came from its mouth, I was deluged in conflicting emotion. 

The syllables were flowing better than the first try. The song was exactly as I’d programmed it… And even with the missing lyrics filled in with random words and the sound still needing a tune-up, it was sickeningly beautiful. If I didn’t look at the machine, if I didn’t watch it sitting there rocking in its seat, gripping the chair with its hands, its lips shaping harsh noise like a caress… 

Kai was in the room with me again. 

I bashed my shaking fingers on the laptop keys until I found the one to stop the playback. “Ugh… _fuck!_ Shut up - for fuck’s sake, shut the fuck UP!”

Kei fell silent, its eyes still closed. The only sound in the studio was my ragged breath as I fought to control the disgust and anger pulsing through my arms. 

“I didn’t do it right.”

“... huh?”

I stared at the android again. It hadn’t moved, still sitting there motionless except for the steady, eerie movement of its shoulders as it breathed… but its mouth suddenly opened to speak. 

“I’m sorry,” it said softly. “The music you make is beautiful, but I don’t make you happy when I sing it. I’m not doing it right.”

This sentiment seemed so absurd to me that I didn’t know how to respond at first. Should I have responded at all? But I exhaled slowly and ran a hand back through my hair, resetting the track on my laptop. “You… _did_ sing it right. A little _too_ right.”

“Should I try it differently?”

“No… just do it the way I programmed it. I don’t need your input.” I felt ridiculous talking to this machine. Even the computer in my house didn’t talk back to me when I gave it orders. But when I shot a look back at the android, I caught it smiling. “What the fuck are you grinning for?”

For a moment, the smile slipped… but it returned with an almost shy demeanor. With its eyes still closed, Kei’s hands brushed up its front and pressed over its chest. “I like Izaki-san’s music a lot,” it said. “It feels really good… inside of me.”

A chill ran the length of my spine. “What… What are you talking about?” I said uneasily. “What do you mean, _inside?_ ”

The slender fingers slowly closed around the fabric of its shirt, gripping it tightly in this strange way. “When you put your music inside of me… When you play it through my body,” it said softly, “I can feel all of it… How all the notes and words feel coming out of me. It feels so good, Izaki-san… I want to sing for you more.”

_When you put your music into me -_

I’d left the room before I realized what was happening. 

“Brilliant! This is beyond fantastic! It’s exactly what we wanted, Izaki.”

“Great.”

Hanagure was fawning over the demo I’d given him of Kei’s first track. It had taken me another week to adjust the vocals and finish fleshing out the instrumental, but I was actually happy with what I’d made… all except the fact that it still stung to listen to. Before he could say any more, Hanagure had started the track up again, holding a headphone up to one ear. He grinned.  
“It’s catchy, too!” he said brightly. “This will definitely get Kei some attention. We should be able to get this out to a fairly wide audience. But…”

I propped the heels of my boots up on the desk and rocked back in the chair. “But?” I prompted.

Hanagure frowned, listened to a few more seconds, and put his headset down. “It’s strange,” he said. “When you told me he sounded like Kai before, I really didn’t think about it… but… this really sounds like him, doesn’t it?”

I gritted my teeth, but stayed silent. So he could hear it now? Great. Maybe I wasn’t crazy. 

He tapped his fingers on the desk, looking past me. “But it’s almost like you did that on purpose,” he told me. “Like you _want_ him to-”

I rocked forward and slammed my palms on the desk, making him jump. “You think I WANT him to sound like that?” I said harshly. “This is what it sounds like when he sings music like Kai’s. It’s the same tone, the same sound. If you couldn’t hear it before, that’s not because of me! I’m telling you he just sounds like this _all the time!”_

Hanagure shrugged noncommittally. “I guess… Still, Kei has his own feel. Maybe tune him up to sound more like himself in the final, eh?”

I grunted under my breath and sat back, kicking a boot back on the desk. When I looked back up, I found Hanagure smirking at me. “What?”

He chuckled. “You’ve only been calling Kei ‘it’ since you met him, you know,” he said smugly. “But just now, you said ‘he’, didn’t you?”

I scowled, trying to ignore the ice that suddenly flooded my stomach. “Guess you’re a bad influence. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Izaki, I think you’re too hard on the kid. You were able to create something really amazing with him, weren’t you?”

“It’s an instrument,” I said. I stood up and stuffed a hand into my pocket as I turned to leave. “Give me an instrument, and I’ll make music somehow. But I’m not gonna start talking to my guitar like it’s a person.”

With the single almost done, I ended up getting pulled into the peripheral details around Kei’s debut, if we were calling it that. Because of course, you couldn’t just release a single… With idols and Idoloids alike, their brand was half their sell, and so Kei had to be fitted for a costume and choreographed for a music video. The choreography was an interesting process, at least - Basically, our choreographer, Nomura, would wear sensors and perform the routine, which Kei could then replicate more or less perfectly. Nomura was a slender and short girl who was very good at what she did. She brought me in with Kei when she was teaching it the routine because she wanted feedback on certain parts of the song I'd written. Ultimately, I thought she nailed the feeling. 

Seeing Kei in a sort of dress rehearsal was kind of weird on its own. I’d only seen the thing wearing loose shirts and leggings before. Now, in a record amount of time, he’d been fitted with a mainly black ensemble with quite a lot of straps and purposeful rips in the fabric. The headset it wore - which plugged into those head ports to act as a sort of wireless receiver - was shaped almost like a pair of drooping cat ears. The thing looked entirely like an oversized doll dressed like that. 

“Isn’t he cute?” Nomura was saying. “They did a really good job on his costume.” She reached up and stroked the top of the android’s head like an animal. It listed towards her hand with a blank smile.

“Not really what I was envisioning for this, honestly,” I said. 

“But it works really well for his body shape, don’t you think?” she said.

If “tight everywhere except around the chest and shoulders” worked well for it, I guess. They’d basically thrown the thing in nothing but leggings, tight shorts, boots, and fingerless gloves with a tattered tee hanging off the shoulders and cut above the midriff. It showed enough skin that there were more seams visible than ever. “All they did was make it look more like a robot,” I snorted. “But whatever. I did my part. Glad to help with the routine, I guess.”

“Yeah! Thanks for coming in. I like knowing your intentions when I do these.” She turned her attention back to Kei and seized its hands, bouncing on her toes. “And you did a good job, too, Kei! You looked really great.”

It smiled wider. “Thank you… Nomura-san. I like your dancing.”

“What do you mean, a good job?” I spat. “It can only do whatever you tell it to.”

“He deserves to know he did well, anyway,” said Nomura. “Wouldn’t you want to be praised if you were him?”

“If I were a machine, I wouldn’t _want_ anything.”

Nomura scowled and puffed out her cheeks, but suddenly she jumped and scuttled to grab her bag from the floor. “Oh - geez! I have to go. Can you take him back to his room?”

“What -” I stared at the android as Nomura scurried for the door. “What do you mean, take it back? Can’t it walk by itself?”

“Kei still needs to be escorted for now,” she said hurriedly. “I brought him up here. Please, Izaki-kun! Asa-chan will be mad if she finds him wandering around by himself.”

Before I could protest, she was gone. I sighed for what felt like the millionth time since meeting this thing. It seemed like people were constantly trying to dump it off on me. 

“All right,” I said wearily. “Where are your normal clothes? Don’t wear that shit outside.”

Kei stared at me, then down at its clothes. “Is this shit?” it asked.

I groaned and ran a hand back through my hair. “Don’t repeat things like that. Hanagure’s gonna get on my case if I teach you to swear. Go change your clothes. Do you know how?”

The android smiled and nodded, then began callously undressing as if I wasn’t there at all. I leaned back on the wall mirror they’d been practicing in, pointedly looking away. Not that it really mattered if I gave this thing privacy, anyway… It was, even under its costume, just a big mannequin, right? … Or… Well, there’s no way they’d make them with any kind of detail. 

I found myself glancing over out of morbid curiosity. Kei had managed to worm out of its shirt, boots, and tights, and was working on the tight little shorts. Its silicone skin was smooth and flawless, all an even shade of white with artificial blushing around the joints. The seams around its thighs, its hips, across the collarbones and splitting the chest were almost disgustingly prominent this way… But… It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that the designers would have thought to slap nipples on it. And yet, there they were. Small and pink and soft. So did female ones have them, too? Why? 

Once Kei was stripped down to tight black underwear, it pulled the pale blue shirt on that it had come in with, and while it struggled with the collar catching on its headset, my eyes slid down below its waist. There was something… off about that. The garment wasn’t exactly lying flat between the legs. 

“Kei…”

As the android’s head popped out from its collar, several hairs sticking out of order, it turned its wide silver eyes on me. “Yes… Izaki-san?”

I hesitated only for a second. It was probably just something the costume team had added for effect, right…? But even so… I gestured vaguely to the skimpy underwear. “Will you… Pull those down for a sec?”

I half-expected the thing to be shy about it, but Kei only smiled like it always did. “Ah… Okay,” it said blithely. 

And without a second thought, the android hooked its thumbs around the sides of the thin garment and rolled them down its thighs. 

_“Why the fuck did you go and give that thing a record deal!?”_

Hanagure seemed blatantly ignorant of the issue I’d brought to him, sitting there leaned back in his seat and scratching below his ponytail. At least, I’d thought he was. “Oh! So you saw that, huh?”

“Huh?” I put my hands on the desk and glared at him. “Don’t tell me you think that’s normal! Are all Idoloids built like - _that?_ ”

“Well, no, actually,” said Hanagure. But at this, he actually appeared to brighten up. He brought up the electronic screen on his desk and began typing into it. “Most of them are… y’know. Flat. But Kei’s designer has been working these features into their Idoloid lines since the start. They’re really quite something! Look - I have the brochure here.”

He turned the display my way, showing off a sleek digital page with minimalist graphics and photos. It would have been impressive if it weren’t advertising what it was. 

“ _... Snow-Maiden’s second Idoloid line pushes the limitations further, featuring realistic genitalia for both our male and female models. The much-loved onaholes from series one now include haptic feedback sensors that “stimulate” your Idoloid in real time, and our male model’s equipment has been upgraded with hydraulics that retain softness when…”_

I swallowed a sudden urge to retch. “And you thought this was a selling point - _why?_ Hanagure, I didn’t peg you for the kind of _degenerate_ that fucks machines.”

“Oh, don’t go there, Izaki,” he said casually, leaning back again. “Kei is one of my artists. I’m strictly professional. Besides, I’m not into guys, like you.” 

“So why did you decide to sign an Idoloid with - what did that say? - a hydraulic dick?”

“I admire the designer’s work,” he shrugged. “Plus, it’s really more for Kei’s benefit, I think. Most of Kei’s features are meant to give him a more humanlike drive, if I remember right. Desire is a pretty strong driving force for people, isn’t it?”

I groaned and put my head in my hands. “I’m not going to entertain the idea that they built this thing like this so it can _enjoy itself,_ ” I said bitterly. “Just tell me you’re going to charge people to fuck it backstage after shows. I’d believe that.”

“I mean, I think that’s what Mariko’s label does. But no, I never considered it, to be honest. Izaki… Kei is part of our team. I didn’t sign him on to be an escort. His more _discreet features_ weren’t a factor when I chose him.”

“The thing isn’t discreet at all,” I told him impatiently. “Did you know it gets turned on when you play a track through it? Did you know it gets off to being plugged into my systems? You ever try to hook up an amplifier when it’s _moaning?_ ”

Hanagure sighed loudly and pulled the display screen back towards himself, fidgeting with it. “I don’t know what to tell you, Izaki,” he said. “You obviously hate Kei. You haven’t stopped complaining about him since you got back. Everyone else in the studio gets along with him famously. He’s a delight to have around. Now, you’ve finished the track I asked you for. You don’t have to keep working with him. Why don’t you just quit?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Why didn’t Hanagure see how fucking wrong this was? It was disturbing. Disgusting. And yet, he seemed to think Kei was a perfectly normal piece of equipment - no, a person. I didn’t want to be involved in that. I would have given anything to ditch the whole project. And yet… The alternative to being here was far more revolting to me. As long as that machine existed… 

My fist slammed on the desk, but I backed off immediately after. “Get the fucking contract for me to be his composer,” I snapped. “No one else is going to make music with that voice. You got it? _No one.”_

“Huh? Hey, Iza-”

I stormed out of Hanagure’s office for what felt like the fifth time in a month. I’d completely forgotten that Kei had followed me up here until I turned and saw it standing there in the hallway, totally still like a broom someone had leaned up against the wall. When I approached, it turned its head and smiled at me as if I’d never left. “Welcome back, Izaki-san…”

Fuck. I still had to take this thing to its room. Irritated, I grabbed the android by the wrist and pulled it along behind me like a petulant child. It didn’t resist or complain. It never had. It never would. 

So now I had two missions in regards to Kei. Stay on as its composer so no one else would ever write its songs… 

And make sure no one ever heard that voice in their bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note regarding pronouns -  
> This doesn't translate directly over to what Jun and Hanagure would be saying in Japanese. Yeah, I'm gonna weeb out for a sec. I'm so sorry.
> 
> Here, we see them talk about how Jun refers to Kei as "he" instead of "it". In Japanese, there aren't really third-person pronouns as we know them (he, she, they). Jun would have spoken about Kei using "Kore", "Sore," and "Are" (this object, that object) instead of "Kare" (he, familiar), "Ano hito" (this person), or simply settling for using Kei's name. How he talks directly to Kei is another thing - he'd more than likely be using "kimi" or "omae" in place of "you", as there's no need to be formal with what you see as a piece of equipment. 
> 
> So basically, the translation is that Jun was saying "That person" instead of "that thing". And that's all I have to say about that.


	4. The Voice in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kei's music debut is doing far better than Jun could have anticipated. He struggles with his feelings about that, torn between pride in his own music composition and bitterness over a machine topping the charts. 
> 
> But slowly, Jun starts to learn all the things that make Kei a person all his own...
> 
> Until the moment where a few words send everything crashing down.

Kei debuted a mere two weeks after I’d finished his song. I hadn’t even realized the video had dropped until, on my way to get coffee one morning, I caught the strains of that voice from a tall music store display being crowded by schoolgirls on the street, whose own excited chatter was nearly drowning it out.

“... Super cute! Doesn’t he look so good in those leggings?”

“His hair’s sooo pretty!”

“The single is out now, should we go in and buy it?”

“Do you think they’ve started making merch yet? Is he too new?”

Between the girls, I saw the slender screen taken up by the moving image of Kei, Nomura’s programmed movements flowing through its body and my song from its mouth. It was a strange feeling seeing people fawn over the machine. I walked on just as the girls hurried into the shop to get copies of the single for themselves.

In the cafe, I looked up Kei’s video for myself in its proper resolution. I had to admit… the studio had done a really good job. In the right light, it was extremely obvious what Kei was… and it wasn’t like they had tried to hide it. But the way it moved, the angle of the camera, the sync of the song with the colors and imagery around it… If I hadn’t known it was a robot, I might have almost thought he was somewhat beautiful like that. 

Until I remembered what was causing it to make those faces as it screamed out the words I’d written into it.

_“It feels so good, Izaki-san…”_

Ugh. The damn thing was gonna spoil my coffee. I drained my cup and stuffed the device back in my pocket. 

To be honest, the entire thing was sickening me. Kei had only debuted less than a day ago, and already the studio was advertising the crap out of it. The whole way to the office, I saw glimpses of Kei in several more places, and none of them were being ignored by passerby. I put my headphones in just to stop hearing people commenting on the thing. Of all the things that I’d worked on, why did this have to be the one that blew up? Clearly, the irony of its lyrics had bypassed everyone as well, or they just didn’t care.

_“... My body’s so cold, I’m freezing,  
I won’t warm up no matter how you hold me,  
But if I don’t breathe, I’ll burn inside,  
So flood my core with snow and ice -”_

Guess I could just keep writing things about robot anatomy, and people would eat it up as long as it sounded sexy. 

It really was kind of a double-edged sword. There was no way I’d ever make music that I considered to be less than my absolute best, no matter what equipment I was using… But somehow, I had desperately wanted Kei to fail. I had wanted people to think it was horrible. It wasn’t going to be my music that caused that feeling… I would never allow it. All I could do was hope that people saw the thing for what it was - a disgusting, cold, unfeeling machine with a voice that didn’t belong to it.

And yet, by the end of the day, the machine’s single was closing in on the top downloads for that month. Something Kai in all his years singing and touring had never come close to doing.   
Kai’s voice and my music were reaching lofty goals he had never been able to aspire to. And I was angry that it wasn’t his body getting the credit. 

I didn’t think it was possible to hate something as deeply as I hated Kei.

All the same… That hatred was starting to conflict with other things inside me. 

Hanagure insisted that Kei be present for the finalization of the contract over his first full album. So I had to sit in the meeting room with both of them across the table from me, just like in the coffee shop that one day. Kei sat calmly as he always did, hands in his lap, glazed eyes focused on nothing over his meaningless smile. It always looked like it had just gotten a lobotomy when it wasn’t singing… I sighed and gave another readthrough of the digital document on the screen between us. 

“This part here about contracted collaborators,” I said. “Change that. If I want anyone to collaborate on a composition, I have to choose them. Not the studio.”

Hanagure made an impatient noise and read the line over again. “Well, that’s fine when it comes to the composition itself… But it’s been a popular move lately for Idoloids to work with each other on duets, even those from different studios. It gives them both a chance to get into each other’s fanbases, you know? Kei has to be able to do that, too…”

“And who’s gonna be programming the other Idoloid’s voice? Not me. One is enough.”

“Normally, it’d be their team who collaborates with you. What do you think, Kei?”

Kei focused back on us and seemed to be about to speak, but I cut across. “I don’t know why you bother asking that thing. It’s going to agree with you no matter what you ask it.”

“Oh, very much not true!” grinned Hanagure. “Kei learns and develops on his own just fine. He’s still new, so that’s the only reason he seems particularly impressionable… Anyway, he can decide for himself whether he wants something or not. It just can’t exactly breach our _agreement_ with him…”

“Agreement?” I repeated incredulously. “You - don’t have a _contract_ with this thing, do you?”

Hanagure frowned. “I wish you’d stop calling him ‘this thing’ right to his face, Izaki. He _can_ hear you.”

To my surprise, Kei spoke up, unprompted. “When I was signed over to Hanahaki Records, Kagami-sensei represented me and helped me agree to the terms. Per article four, subsection fourteen, I am allowed agency on decisions regarding artistic integrity and personal expression. If my decisions in those matters cannot be agreed upon by the studio, then I am to be counseled and a representative will present a case for my final choice.”

“In other words, if our team believes that Kei’s decision doesn’t make sense,” Hanagure explained quickly. “But we do try to allow him quite a lot of say in what he does. Even my decision to approach you about writing his debut was something he weighed in on…”

My head spun. Agency on decisions… but counseling if it decided something stupid? Was that it? Why even bother letting it have a choice at all? “What the fuck does an android know about _artistic integrity?_ ” I spat. 

Hanagure waved this away. “It’s really just a modified form of the contract that’s given to child stars,” he said. “Kei is intelligent. It’s not fair to just use him like an appliance without him having any choice in the matter. Anyway, back to the question at hand… Kei, would you like to be able to sing with other Idols?”

There was a momentary pause in the machine’s face as it gazed blankly over at Hanagure, who seemed unperturbed by its expression. The irises flexed and turned on me. “Izaki-san will still write my music… Right?” it asked slowly.

My blood ran cold at its words. Why would it…?

“Of course!” smiled Hanagure.

Kei’s mouth spread open in a smile of its own. “Then I don’t mind,” it said.

“Well, then that’s settled -”

“H… Hold on,” I said. “Why does Kei care if I’m the one writing music for it?”

Hanagure blinked. “Why don’t you ask him?”

I sighed and looked back at the android, whose bittersweet smile was on me. “Why, then?” I grumbled.

Kei’s head tilted slightly to one side, its wide eyes gleaming. “Because I love the music you make, Izaki-san.” 

Of course. I hoped it wouldn’t elaborate on that. 

“Well, there you go,” Hanagure said. “If there’s nothing else, then you can put your name and seal at the bottom, and I’ll have Kei do the same.”

I gave the document a final glance, but everything seemed to be in order. I didn’t know why I was so apprehensive about this… I had asked for it. I’d demanded it. And I’d already written one song… That hadn’t gone so badly, to be honest. At the bottom of the last page, I activated my watch and tapped it against the screen. My digital seal popped up where I left it. 

The contract was passed over, and I sat back as Hanagure made sure the android got to see it and put its mark down as well. I was surprised he’d even bothered to get the thing its own seal. But Kei seemed fixated on the bottom of the screen where my name was typed in.

“Izaki… Jun.”

My jaw tightened at the sound of my name in its mouth. “Yeah. That’s my given name. What about it?”

But the android only stared at the screen until Hanagure reached over to help it sign. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why it had said my name like that. 

Three weeks into the work for the album, I started to get filters of feedback regarding how Kei’s debut was going. At first, I refused to acknowledge any of it; I said I didn’t care what people on the outside thought about the thing.

And then the royalties started to come in. A lot. 

My curiosity led me to dig into exactly how far Kei had spread in only a month. And the answer honestly overwhelmed me… I hadn’t realized that Idoloid fans actually waited for new models to make their debut like they were waiting for the release of a new video game. From the looks of it, Kei’s release had gone over very well. Hanahaki’s new rock singer Idoloid was the subject of quite a lot of talk online, on music sites and social media alike. Female Idol enthusiasts were already putting together photo collections of the blue-haired android with every cutesy filter out there. And people were praising the music - not just the singer. Sure, I saw a lot of discussion about how beautiful Kei’s voice was… which I couldn’t deny, begrudged as I was… But many things I saw talked about the song itself. 

It was a form of reassurance I didn’t know I needed. And it encouraged me to keep going with Kei.

I still had trouble with it talking or looking at me while I worked, though. Holed up in the studio, I bent over my laptop and fidgeted with a verse line I was stuck on with Kei plugged in next to me. The best position I’d found was to put a chair against the wall next to the desk and have it face the wall behind me. Kei simply sat there with its hands in its lap, not moving or making a sound unless I activated it from my interface. It was still strange to me to have this much direct control over a person’s body…

No - not a person. It was just a machine. Just shaped like a person. 

I sighed, sat back, and wound my finger around one of the wires trailing from the side of my computer. The lyrics here were giving me some trouble. “What a pain,” I muttered.

After a moment of me staring at the screen, the machine spoke up. “Izaki-san… is it no good?”

I was about to tell the thing to shut up again… but it had stayed silent during these sessions for an entire week, and it had barely said anything since I told it to stop. It wasn’t really… hurting anything to talk to it. “The song is fine,” I said. “It sounds fine when you sing it. I just need to decide on the words. That’s all.”

A pause. Kei’s head tilted forward slightly, its hair falling over the shoulders. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” it said. “Writing the words.”

“Not always. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s hard.”

“How do you decide if it’s easy?”

I rocked back in my seat, staring at the machine. For some reason… listening to it talk wasn’t bothering me as much anymore. “You don’t get to decide if something is easy,” I said finally. “Sometimes the words come to you… sometimes they don’t, and you just have to work harder. I write lyrics for you just… from what I think you’re feeling, I guess.” 

At this, Kei suddenly opened its eyes and looked up at me. Once again, I got the urge to order it to shut them… but I sighed and let it go, looking away from its face. 

“Izaki-san… You know what I’m feeling?” it said.

“Mm… I guess not,” I told it. “Just what I assume. You don’t really have these kinds of feelings… It’s not possible for you to feel this.”

Kei’s head tilted again. “I can’t feel it? Why not?”

“Because you’re not human.”

“But I feel things. I can feel-"

“I know the kind of things you can feel. But it’s not the same.” 

Not a bad bit of inspiration, though. I began noting down whatever came to mind in a notepad on my computer. After a few minutes, I realized Kei is still watching me - not my face this time, but my fingers on the keyboard. And for the first time, I thought I could see - though I might have imagined it - a kind of sadness in the wide, silvery expanse of its eyes.

The next recording session was better. Better in the sense that I had slowly learned to work in slight differences between Kei’s voice and Kai’s. Kei had a different kind of inflection and pattern when he spoke, and it was something I could adapt into his songs to make him sound… as Hanagure had once asked me to… more like himself. I couldn’t totally ignore their similarities, but listening to Kei didn’t make me want to claw my ears out, either. 

Over time, I had begun to get more familiar with Kei himself, as well. The movements and facial expressions when he sang were the product of an algorithmic program that somehow translated the musical score into muscle flections and mimicked emotion. It changed at the slightest difference in tone - every tiny detail of my composition, from key to chord progression, made an impact on how Kei reacted to the music. The process actually started to fascinate me… And there were times when I would believe the convincing display to such a degree that I ended up surprised when Kei would end a particularly rigorous song and simply go still and silent, without a trace of ragged breath or exertion. 

Those moments were like breaking a spell. Like the doll came alive only when it sang for me… and once its voice faded, so too did its spirit. 

Kei had been quiet for the last few minutes as I finished processing the composition he’d just sung to my satisfaction. I sighed, closed my laptop, and went to his side to unhook the wires as usual. I’d gotten used to the slight twitch in Kei’s hands with each plug I pulled out. His mouth still opened slightly in silence even though he obeyed my order to stop making those suggestive noises. When I fitted his ear back into place, he paused, then looked up at me with wide eyes. 

“Are we done, Izaki-san?” he asked.

“For now,” I said coolly. “That song’s finished. I have to work on the others. But I don’t need you anymore today.”

I wrapped up the wires and cleared the desk. Kei stood up on his own while I packed my bag, and then he just stood there with his hands folded. 

“Shit, that’s right,” I muttered. “You need me to take you back to your room still, don’t you?”

Kei turned his eyes on me and smiled, giving a short nod. “Would you please walk me there, Izaki-san?”

I let out a weary noise. “Yeah… all right. Gimme a sec and we’ll go.”

Truthfully, I’d gotten used to taking Kei here and there in the studio. Except for the fact that I drew more attention and needed to cut people off from trying to chat me up while we were walking. At least I had the excuse of needing to go put Kei in his room every time. 

I’d been surprised the first time I saw the room that the studio had provided Kei. It really wasn’t much different from a one-room apartment except that it had no kitchen or bathroom. Kei had a simple angled bed with his charging cables built into it, plus a desk with a PC and a couple of chairs for guests, but that was it. No personal effects, no TV, no books or anything… But that was typical. I couldn’t imagine that an android would need to entertain itself when no one was around. He always took the time to take his sneakers off before he went inside, as a strange sort of habit. Once he’d taken a few steps, he turned and looked back at me. “Are you coming inside too, Izaki-san?”

I rolled my neck a little, sighed yet again, and shut the door behind me. “Just for a sec. Do you need your cables plugged in or whatever?”

Kei smiled and shook his head plainly. “I can do it by myself.”

“Mm.” I was about to leave Kei there, but… something kept stopping me. 

Idoloids were built to be perfect and beautiful. I had to remind myself of that, that Kei’s incredibly proportioned body and the immaculate symmetry of his face were entirely by design. But myself being human, I was predisposed to being unable to look away from him sometimes. A little of that was just the fact that I was so used to him at this point… The jarring sight of the seams in his skin and the eerie color of his eyes, pupils refracting red light, was starting to not bother me anymore. When my gaze returned from a lap over his shape, I found he was staring back at me with a strange, empty look. Not smiling.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

Kei’s head tilted like a bird’s. “Izaki… san. Do you really hate me?”

I blinked, taken aback. “That’s… why would you ask something like that?”

The android’s expression stayed the same, his eyes wide. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he said slowly. “There is something… inside me. That hurts. When I think about it.”

I didn’t understand what was happening. Kei had never talked like this before. Hanagure had said he was still learning… Was this just part of that? But where was he learning it from? From my lyrics? From other people? I found myself moving towards him, watching the wide silvery eyes glaze over as they returned my stare. “What hurts?” I asked. “What part is telling you that?”

“It hurts… inside me,” he said again. A delicate hand drifted up along his chest, lingering on the line of his collarbone. “I hear it… The voice inside me.”

I suddenly felt an awful sense of dread crawl over me. This wasn’t right. I shouldn’t be here…

Kei’s soft lips were parting. His eyes grew heavy as he stared up at me, as the warm, familiar voice drifted from inside of him -

“I love you… Jun.”

I couldn’t feel my heart beating. “What…? What are you… why are you saying… Where did you get…”

I watched Kei’s mouth move, but the words were drowned out by the deafening ring in my ears. Blood and adrenaline were pounding through me like thunder. My hands felt suddenly numb and cold. That voice, saying those words, speaking my name like that, with that face -

This thing -  
Stealing his voice -  
Talking to me like -

I was on the floor. I was kneeling on the floor, and the machine was underneath me, saying words I couldn’t hear, staring at me with unblinking eyes, and my hands were clutching its skull -

BANG.

CRACK.

SMASH.

Slamming the thing’s head against the floor, over and over again, watching the wide eyes dilate out of sync as they stared up at me, as screams poured out of me that I couldn’t understand anymore -

SMACK.

CRASH.

THWACK.

My thumbs dug into the lines of its face, tore at whatever I could grab, the soft mouth opening wide to cry out to someone who no longer heard it, who no longer heard anything except the distorted noise of the thing being ripped apart under me -

_Don’t say my name like that._

_Don’t look at me like that._

_Don’t tell me things that he said._

_Don’t use his voice like this._

_I’ll kill you._

_I’ll fucking kill you._

_I’ll -_

I suddenly heard my own raw voice dying in my mouth. I couldn’t remember anything I’d just been howling, didn’t understand why I was so out of breath, didn’t know at first why my hands hurt so badly… I brought them to my face, confused by the cuts, the red marks around my fingers… And slowly, my focus fell between my hands, to the figure lying beneath me…

“Kei,” I said hoarsely. “Kei… no… _Kei!_ ”

The android was still moving. I could hear the servos whirring in his neck as he tried to lift his head, the wreckage of it… The panel of his face over the left eye was thrown aside, exposing a lidless, staring orbital and raw steel and plastic beneath, one eyeball rolling back out of line with the other, whose lens was cracked. The silicone skin around his cheek was torn open. From between strands of scattered hair, I saw shards of material littering the floor around his head, and as I watched, a clear, oily liquid began to spread out from under his shattered skull like spilt blood. At every angle, the things that made him inhuman were exposed, laid bare… 

I did this. I - 

I did this to him.

I brought my shaking hands to try and hold his face, cold coolant oil dripping between my fingers, but Kei’s head jerked to the side with a strange clicking noise. When at last he spoke, the voice was unrecognizable, halting and flat, pitch changing irregularly with every sound.

“H… el… p…” Kei’s lips weren’t moving with his words, just gaping open and closed out of tempo with the disjointed syllables. My stomach turned. “I… za… it… h… ur… kkk-k-k-k—“

I clapped my hands over my ears as the android’s voice dissolved into screeches and static, and then silence… His voice was fading. Panic flooded my veins. In blind fervor I tried to hold him together, to put it right, to undo what I’d just done, but he was broken… I had broken him. Panting, my body quaking, I staggered to my feet and slammed into the door, barely able to open it on my own before I ran out into the hallway at full pelt, screaming -

“ASA! HANAGURE! _SOMEONE - !”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For obvious reasons, the lyrics that Jun mentions at the beginning of the chapter are not really going to match up well in Japanese. I'm not that good, nor am I dedicated enough to actually try to write lyrics in another language.


	5. The Voice in Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The damage to Kei is more than Jun had anticipated. Facing the repercussions of nearly destroying Hanahaki Records' newest Idol, the future of his career is now in the hands of his victim, and Jun must try to search himself for what's causing his hatred.
> 
> And when Kei's maker arrives at the studio to repair him, Jun is presented with a chance for answers.

The room is sterile. The staff made me change into clean clothes and a mask, and cleaned my hands with a powerful soap before I could even see him. They tell me not to get closer than I have to, not to make contact with him if I don’t have to. He’s not in the isolation chamber anymore, but the room is empty of everything he doesn’t absolutely need. Friends can’t bring flowers anymore. He’s already grown bored of watching screens, but I can’t bring him anything else to occupy his time.

“It’s kinda stupid, huh?” he says, trying to make me smile. “You should see the doctors when they come in. They have to wear these suits… Like I’m radioactive, huh?”

“Mm.”

“I keep asking when I can be moved to a normal room, but they don’t answer me. Did you ask?”

“I’m not technically your family member or anything. Kinda lucky they let me in here at all.”

“Told you we should have gotten married already.”

I laugh quietly. “You got more fan mail this week. People still miss you.”

“Ahh…” He slumps back on the bed and runs his hands through his hair. The wires and tubes trail up with his thin arms. “Wish I could write back. Maybe you can read them to me over the phone and I’ll tell you what to write for me…”

“I think we can arrange that.”

He breathes out slowly and lets his hands fall back on his lap. His hair is shaggy, needs a trim. His face is too thin, eyes too deeply shadowed, the lines of his face interrupted by the oxygen tube taped across his cheeks. Deep blue bruises stain his arms anywhere he’s even slightly bumped them against something. He’s still beautiful even like this… But it wrecks me to look at him. 

“They were talking about intubating me,” he says softly. “Once it’s too hard to breathe.”

“If it helps, then…”

“No.” His eyes slip half-closed, staring off into space. “If they do that, I won’t be able to sing. Even if I do recover.”

I can’t think of what to say to this. I just want to hold him. Just share my warmth with him. It’s all I have to offer anymore.

“Jun…”

I force myself to look back into his eyes. I don’t know anymore if it’s the sickness or the lights in the room that have stolen the shimmer from them. 

“One day, they’re going to tell me there’s nothing left that they can do,” he tells me. “They’re gonna just try to keep me alive for as long as they can in this room. And I really… don’t want to live like that.”

My body stiffens. My chest is cold. “I won’t let -”

“You can’t change that… And I don’t want you to try.” The dark eyes slide closed, long lashes almost touching his cheeks. “When that happens, I’m going to call you and make you come here… And I don’t care what any doctor says. I want you to come here and fuck me. In this bed, if you have to.”

I’m torn between terror and laughter. The request would be ridiculous if it weren’t coming from him. “It’s… not going to come to that.”

“I’m saying this because it will. I mean it.” His voice grows softer. He’s exhausted. “I don’t even remember how long I’ve been here. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to do it before we’ve… made love again. Okay?”

“Kai…”

“Promise me.”

“Kai, I can’t…”

“Please.”

I sigh and let my head fall. Part of me knows he’s right. Part of me accepted it ages ago. But that part had been so quiet until now. I’d been content to never listen to it. 

“Fine. But I have conditions.”

He smirks at me. “And those are?”

I reach for his hand and hold it as gently as I can, careful not to squeeze, to break the delicate blood vessels in his skin. He supplies the pressure for me. “Not this bed,” I tell him. “I’ll bring you home. I’ll make sure you’re home with me.”

“That sounds nice…”

“And once you’re back in my bed… I’ll make you sing for me.”

I slept at the studio. I couldn’t go home. For the longest time, I just stayed curled up in the sound room with my equipment, putting my work in front of me but unable to do anything. In the room whose only window opened into the recording booth, I wasn’t sure what time it was when Hanagure came in to check on me… And when he did, his grave face was shadowed with clear disappointment.

“Where’s Kei?” It was the first thing I could think to ask - the only thing. 

Hanagure sighed. “He’s in his room. We contacted his manufacturer as soon as we could, and they came over to start work on him this morning. Prognosis is actually fairly optimistic, all things considered… I don’t think a _human_ would have survived what you did to him.”

I shuddered and slumped down in my seat. “I didn’t… know what was happening. He just… Suddenly started talking so strangely, saying shit… I just lost it.”

“Clearly,” he said shortly. “What am I supposed to do here, Izaki? Is this my fault? Should I have seen how much you hated Kei and refused to let you work with him?” 

“No… it’s not…”

“Isn’t it? You tore his _face_ open. You smashed his _head_ on the floor. These aren’t the random actions of someone who just heard the kid say something they didn’t like.”

“You weren’t there,” I muttered.

“I didn’t have to be,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what Kei said. Nothing could have possibly warranted what happened.”

“I know that,” I snapped. “I’m not here trying to defend what I did! I regretted it as soon as it was over -“

“- By which point, it was far too late, Izaki,” he frowned. “It’s great that you feel bad that you almost _destroyed_ someone with your bare hands. Doesn’t really fix it.”

The soundproof pattern of soft pyramids on the walls made every word that much clearer. In the space between, the room was eerily silent. 

“Let me see him,” I said quietly.

“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t,” Hanagure told me. “I’d end your contract here and now. But I’ve discussed this with the involved parties, and it’s going to be up to Kei and Kagami-sensei whether you stay on with him - and whether you ever work here again.”

“Kagami…” The name rang a bell. I looked up at Hanagure, trying to see past the obvious distaste in his eyes. “The designer. He’s the one who’s fixing Kei?”

“He’s the best option,” Hanagure shrugged. “The damage was way beyond Asa-chan and our techs. There’s entire pieces of him that have to be replaced. You’d better pray they can get it done before his appearance on NK this weekend. I don’t wanna be the one to hold a press conference announcing an Idoloid’s drop from the public eye a month after his debut.”

I shuddered. Entire pieces of him. It was revolting to think of him like that… Hanagure moved to the door, but suddenly stopped and looked back at me.

“Why _do_ you hate Kei so much?”

I stared up at him. “Huh…?”

“What’s this ‘huh’?” he said. “This goes way beyond him being an Idoloid. You have a personal grudge against him. Why? Because he sounds like Kai?”

I put my elbows on my knees and lowered my face into my hands, sighing. “I… I can’t…”

“No,” said Hanagure, turning on me. “You need to actually put thought into this, Izaki, or clearly this is going to happen again. I can’t be the only one who sees this. You act like Kei is the one who killed him.”

At these words, my body went rigid. I felt the blood rushing in my throat. “Don’t… Don’t talk about…”

“He was _sick_ , Izaki,” Hanagure said loudly. “He was sick and there was nothing you could do. And you need to do whatever you can to let go of that, and don’t take your anger out on Kei just because you couldn’t save him. It doesn’t matter if that really is his voice in Kei’s sound font or not. Destroying him won’t bring Kai back.”

My chair upended and banged on the floor in my sudden rush to get at Hanagure, but he’d already shut the door behind him. The sound room isolated my ragged panting, the sobs encroaching on my breath. I staggered back against the wall and slid down, crumpling on myself, pressing my palms against my eyes to stop the tears from running.

“You bastard,” I gasped out. “Don’t talk about…”

But there was no one to hear me. In the sanctity of silence Hanagure left behind, I let the misery take me.

I made myself eat lunch in the studio’s cafeteria. I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I cleaned myself up in the bathroom. I ended up just grabbing one of the lunch boxes they had prepped in coolers and eating it back in the sound room. Having put it off long enough, though, I thought I’d finally go visit Kei. 

I lingered outside the door to his room for a long minute, my knuckles hovering beneath the plate bearing his name. A single kanji character. “Kei” could be written any number of ways… One way of writing it meant “square-cut gem”. But that kanji also made up one-half of the one they’d actually chosen for Kei’s name, the one written on the plate decorating his door… “Silicon”. 

Damn it. For all their talk of treating Kei like a person, they seemed to love hammering home the obvious machine in him. I was almost offended on his behalf.  
I fought through my hesitation and rapped on the door. I almost expected to hear Kei answer, but I didn’t know how far they’d gone in fixing him. But there was a voice from inside to answer me. A male voice, low and dragging.

“It’s open.”

I already suspected what I’d see when I went in. But it still didn’t wholly prepare me to meet this new person, or to see Kei himself.

The man who could only be Kagami was immediately identifiable, even if I’d never seen him before in my life. Even sitting down, his height was clear by the length of his skinny limbs, legs almost folded under his chair where he sat with his back to the door, lined up beside Kei’s bed. His long hair was dyed highlighter yellow and shaved along the sides, showing black roots. His baggy clothes were entirely black, and I suspected the worn, scuffed boots by the door were his. I saw these next to Kei’s tidy, brightly colored high-tops, looked down at my own sneakers, and decided to kick these off at the entrance as well before I stepped inside. Kagami’s figure had obscured most of his patient from view, but I was able to see Kei fully almost the moment I approached… and what I saw almost made me sick to my stomach.

The Idoloid’s body laid straight on the bed with the torso held upright and neck supported with a slim cushion, bare-chested, only wearing his leggings. His face was… hard to look at. It was almost worse than what I remembered, perhaps because the damaged pieces were taken away. The eye whose panel hadn’t been ripped off was closed, but every other part of his face was wide open - the other eye was gone, the plastic facial structure laid bare like a stripped skeleton, the ports on both sides of his head open and trailing thin cables that were nothing like the ones I used to program him. The only thing keeping the machine from looking like a grinning skull was the fact that his teeth were obscured… but only by a sort of artificial muscle that must have comprised his lips. 

I shuddered and tried to look away, but the sight of Kei’s face was impossible to ignore. Kagami was leaning over a sort of lap table that straddled Kei’s waist and didn’t seem perturbed by my presence at all. He set the delicate tools in his hands aside so he could take a gentle hold on the android’s bare jaw.

“Kei,” he said, his deep voice soft and singsong. “Can you move your mouth for me?”

There was a slight pause. I felt suddenly anxious. Was he even powered on right now? But I ended up jumping slightly when Kei obediently opened his mouth wide and closed it without issue.

“Excellent,” said Kagami brightly. The room fell silent as he picked up a piece from his workspace and fitted it over Kei’s nose and mouth - no… That WAS Kei’s mouth. I felt a strange relief wash over me seeing his face closer to complete and unhurt. Gathering his tools again, Kagami looked over his shoulder at me for the first time with a blasé smile. “Izaki Jun… right?” he said.

I set my jaw. If Kagami knew who I was, then he probably already knew what had happened… I wondered what Hanagure had told him. Something in me put a shield up, anticipating a fight. “Yes. I… just wanted to check on Kei.”

Kagami seemed to appraise me without his eyes ever leaving my face. Eye, rather, because the other was hidden behind that yellow hair. His face was thin and drawn, but in a way that suggested a natural shape rather than starvation. His eyelids were heavy over eyes brighter than their color. The smile never faded or grew. Apparently deciding against berating me, he turned back to his work. “He’s a very good patient,” he said. “Don’t you think? I’ve made most of the replacements already. But there’s still a bit more to go on the processor… Lotta things got knocked loose.”

As he spoke, Kagami pulled a computer chip out of the side of Kei’s face with careful precision - but I noticed Kei’s hand suddenly twitching madly at his side as it was removed, trailing thin conductor ribbon out with it. 

“No good?” Kagami said in that sing-song voice. “Where does it hurt, Kei?”

Ice ran up my back as the android’s mouth opened again. Even with his nose and lips properly affixed, the mouth still wasn’t moving in a humanlike way, and his voice - Kei’s voice - “It-hu-r-ts,” he said, the syllables stilted, uneven, toneless. “It-h-ur-ts. Ka-ga-mi-se-n-se-i. Hu-r-ts.”

My chest suddenly felt very tight. “Kei… can’t really feel pain… can he?”

Kagami peered at me over his shoulder again, waited a moment, then returned his focus to Kei, examining the processor chip. “Of course he can feel pain,” he said smoothly. “Why would I want to rob him of an experience like that?”

I kept my eyes on Kei’s still twitching hand. “How does he feel it…?”

“It’s complex. Obviously. But Kei’s internal troubleshooting systems can tell when something in his body isn’t right. If part of him is damaged, or missing, or not functioning properly… He will register that as pain. Kei, tell me what hurts.”

The disjointed words were softer now. “It-hu-r-ts. Po-r-t-se-ve-n. Pa-th-ni-ne-tee-n. In-va-li-"

“Ah, there,” said Kagami lightly. “Yes… okay. That’s the blown capacitor. I was wondering where the issue was. Hold on, darling.”

Damaged. Missing. Registers as pain. The guilt of what I’d done had just doubled - I hadn’t considered that Kei could have… _felt_ what I did to him. Kagami seemed rather oblivious to his creation’s suffering as he plucked the entire chip out of Kei’s head and set it down on the work table, fingers picking through a carefully sorted tray of bits and pieces, then began fixing the offending capacitor.

Having nothing else to do, I sat down in the other guest chair a little bit away from Kei’s bed and just… watched him. Kagami said nothing to me, but he also didn’t shoo me away or pointedly ignore me. 

“Do you… care that I’m here?” I asked him at length.

He didn’t answer for a moment, until the part he’d been fixing was done and he’d set aside the tool in his hand. “No,” he said. “I think it’s quite nice that you’re visiting him. I think everyone else thinks they’ll get in my way… but nothing can really interfere with my work. I promise.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said sullenly. “You know what happened to him. I’m sure Hanagure told you -“

“I’m well aware of what happened, Izaki-kun,” said Kagami. _What’s with -kun?_ I thought, but didn’t want to bother. He continued. “But the fact that you’re here means, to me, that you intend to put it right. And so I would like to put your mind at ease: Kei will hurt until I am done fixing him. But you haven’t damaged him beyond repair. Everything that’s essential to Kei being Kei is either intact or easy to replace.”

This did more to release the tension in my shoulders than I anticipated. My breath shuddered out and I sank back in the chair, gazing at Kei. “His… his voice,” I said slowly. “That wasn’t damaged? He’s talking strangely.”

Kagami was fidgeting with the processor again. “Kei’s voice modulator - the configuration of processors and programs that control the way his voice acts - is the part we’re fixing now. His soundfont and base vocal program, however, are in his throat, as they should be. Now… If you’d strangled him, maybe that would be a problem. But you only really unseated the vertebra in his neck, which was an easy fix; his voice will be just fine. There. How does that feel, sweetheart?” 

The computer chip apparently fixed, Kagami was clipping it onto the copper ribbon and slipping it back into place. Kei paused, made a strange buzzing noise deep in the back of his mouth, and finally spoke again, in a voice much more like himself. “Izaki… san.” 

My heart thumped in the strangest way. My name… Why? 

“He’s right over there, don’t worry,” Kagami smiled. “Let me work on your eyes, sweetie. You’ll see your friend soon.”

As Kagami leaned over his project’s face once more, delicate tools stuck in the android’s eye socket, I shifted out of my seat and came over hesitantly. “You designed him… right?” 

Kagami said nothing, but he hummed in affirmation. 

I crossed my arms and leaned up against the wall by Kei’s bed. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m sure you’ll find you can.”

I sighed. Was he being obtuse on purpose? I finally had the chance to talk to the man who created the Idoloid that had overturned my life. Where could I even start? “Why did you build him this way?” I asked.

Kagami hummed again, pausing to change his tools. “Do you mean his body type?” he said. “His look? His personality?”

“All of that and - god damnit. _Why_ did you give him sex organs?” To my surprise, he laughed. “I thought there weren’t enough male models in the Idoloid scene,” he said. “And certainly none with Kei’s unique style. He’s quite tall for an Idol. Quite a bit broader in the shoulder than most cute males.” Another pause. He picked up from his tray what looked like a glass ball - with a turn of my stomach, I realized it was Kei’s missing eye. “As for his sexual features… I don’t know. Because I can. Because I want to know how artificial intelligence perceives human sexuality. Because I want to see what that sexuality means to someone like Kei. Will he discover himself on his own, do you think? Will it become part of what affects his decisions, his drive? Or will it simply never come up until someone decides to teach him?”

I didn’t know what to say to this. It wasn’t really what I had expected from a man who designed a haptic feedback system in an android’s asshole. “So you don’t… Well, do you?”

“Do what?”

“Have you - tested any of them?”

Kagami paused again, then looked back at me with wide eyes. “I’ve tested the systems themselves because they require testing to get right, but not with my own body, Izaki-kun,” he said, almost smirking. “These are my children. What kind of pervert would have sex with his own child?”

The thought and his tone almost embarrassed me. I crossed my arms and stared at Kei as his eye was pushed back into place and adjusted. “There’s… something else,” I said quietly.

“Oh? And what would that be?”

There was only one thing I’d ever wanted to ask. The thing I should have started with. I tried to keep my voice even, tried to keep the unbridled anger out of it. “Where did you get his voice?” I demanded. 

Kagami didn’t answer at first. He seemed deep in his work, or avoiding it entirely. “All right,” he muttered. “I think that does it, sweetheart. Let’s just clean you up and -“

I stormed over before I could stop myself, leaning over beside the android to force Kagami to acknowledge me. “Don’t you fucking ignore that,” I growled. “Tell me whose voice you used. You know exactly why I’m asking. That’s why you’re not answering me, right?”

Kagami sighed loudly and tilted his head back, paused, then reached for his desk again. “My voice donors are anonymous, Izaki-kun. I don’t identify them. I don’t have to. They chose not to be identified.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told him darkly. “That voice - the person who had that voice wouldn’t have asked for-“

“Do you know that for sure?”

“W… what?”

Kagami turned to look at me slowly, the bland smile gone for the first time. “Let me tell you something about all of the people who make my Idoloids sing, Izaki-kun,” he said. “I didn’t go to them - they all came to me. They were all good people whose voices had never reached as far as they should. They were singers who deserved to be heard far beyond the scope of their reach. My Idoloids have exalted their voices, brought their songs to a world that would have never heard them -“

“You - how could you - what the fuck are you talking about?! Your stupid site said that you don’t use professional singers! And how can you say they won’t be heard? You don’t know that those people won’t-“

“- Because without my Idoloids, their voices would have been lost,” he finished calmly. “Do you understand yet, Izaki-kun? It’s true that I don’t use professional singers. At least… not those who can still sing.”

My stomach felt cold. Kagami returned his attention to Kei, reassembling the Idoloid’s face while I stood there dumbstruck. 

“It is him,” I muttered. “Isn’t it? Kei’s voice is -“

“Kei’s voice is Kei’s,” he said dismissively. “I know you think you speak for every person I’ve worked with when you try to defend them, Izaki-kun… But they all had their reasons for coming to me. The woman who once sang like Mariko was losing her voice. The man who gave his voice to Seimei decided he was past his time. The girl whose song resides in Ayu… She knew the pressure of being an Idol was destroying her. They all came to me at the last moment and asked me to let them sing. And I did. My Idoloids carry their voices, yes… but they also carry their pain, their sadness… and their dreams. And so does Kei.”

I tried to speak, but nothing came. I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say, what I could possibly say in response to what he had just told me. I clenched my fists at my sides, staring down at Kei’s still hand. “You didn’t know the person you took that voice from,” I said, my voice cracking. “You had no right to replace him with… with…”

“Kei will never replace a person,” said Kagami. “He can only be himself. And Izaki-kun… I know you want me to tell you for sure if the person you’re speaking of is who recorded their voice for Kei. I can’t tell you that. Regardless of why they chose this, regardless of whether that person is alive or not, regardless of what they did or did not mean to you… I made a promise to them. There. How does that feel, darling?”

Mouth halfway open, I was startled by the sight of Kei’s eyes suddenly opening. The irises flexed into focus as Kagami took his hands away and began moving the desk from across his patient’s lap. Mechanical eyes adjusted slowly, optics twitching, calibrating - then drifting and finding me. For a moment, he just lay there like a doll… Then, slowly, a shy smile worked onto his face.

“Much better,” Kagami said. “Hold still and I’ll let you go.”

Kei stayed in place while his bizarre maker unhooked the wires from his head ports and I came over to sit on the edge of the bed… but his ears were still missing when he was released and threw himself onto me without warning. His body was heavy, arms tightening around my shoulders, newly repaired face burying in my chest… But as much as it shocked me, I didn’t stop him. 

“Izaki-san,” he sighed. “I’m all better.”

“Yeah. Looks like it,” I said, awkwardly petting his hair. 

Kagami just stood there gathering his equipment and humming under his breath - humming what I recognized as Kei’s debut single. Kei didn’t seem to want to move. 

“He isn’t… angry at me,” I said slowly. 

“Why would he be?”

I frowned. “I’m the one who hurt him. Doesn’t he realize that?”

It was Kei who responded, lifting his face to meet mine. “It doesn’t hurt now,” he said.

“You shouldn’t be quick to forgive people like that,” I told him wearily. “Someone could take advantage of you.”

“Will Izaki-san take advantage of me?” 

I sighed and patted him on the head. Guess I couldn’t fault him for being too trusting. But there was something still bothering me.

“Kei… Why did you say that to me?”

The silvery eyes were wide, head listing to the side. “Say what, Izaki-san?”

I opened my mouth, hesitating as I glanced over at Kagami, who didn’t seem to be paying attention. “When I… when we were together last time,” I told him, “you said something strange to me, and you called me by my name. Do you remember?” 

There was no flash of understanding, no immediate response. Not even a smile. “Izaki-san, I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“When you called me _Jun_ ,” I said, getting annoyed. “You said… You said my name like that, and…”

But the words faltered before I could finish my thought. Kei was staring up at me without a single indication that he had ever remembered saying the words that drove me insane… 

And I was suddenly afraid that I had been insane before I heard him say it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weeb time.
> 
> Kei as a given name can be written in nine different kanji.
> 
> Square-cut gem/square jewel = 圭  
> Silicon = 硅
> 
> Silicon is, of course, an essential component in computer chips and motherboards, hence the almost cruel pun.


	6. The Voice in Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jun has been tasked with preparing and escorting Kei for his first major TV appearance. Now faced with the expectation of being able to develop a personality for Kei's fans to connect with, Jun must get the Idoloid ready for a proposed interview and broadcast performance.
> 
> And among the many hurdles, Jun must somehow explain love to an android who's never felt it...
> 
> But when Kei connects to Jun's latest song lyrics in an unexpected way, the possibility arises that Kei may understand more than anyone thought possible.

“Are you out of your _mind?_ ”

The situation at the studio was calming down. I’d at least gotten better about having sudden meltdowns in Hanagure’s office. But the decision he’d just presented me with was outlandish.

“Less than a week ago, you were telling me I’d be lucky to ever work with Kei again,” I said, my arms firmly crossed. “Now you want me to chaperone his fucking TV appearance?”

Hanagure gave me a noncommittal shrug, his familiar grin back in place. “I’m going to be there for some of it,” he said. “But I wasn’t able to take the whole day out. I’m expected to be in Shibuya the whole afternoon for a street show with the girls’ groups.”

“What about Asa?” I frowned. “She’s his _handler_ , isn’t she?” 

“Asa-chan takes care of Kei’s more tech-related and learning needs,” he replied. “As far as negotiating appearances and working with the music side, though, not her strong suit. Kei will need to be escorted to the studio that afternoon; he’ll have a few live performances and some interview segments, and someone needs to make sure the NK team is fair with him, and that he can answer and talk with them well enough to satisfy his fans. These are absolutely key appearances! This is where Kei’s personality gets to shine, and it’s important that the public gets to see the best version of him that he can be.”

“If it’s that important, why didn’t you make time for it?” I said irritably. 

“Like I said, I’ll be in Shibuya. But I should be able to come by for the last hour.”

“Great.”

“And besides,” Hanagure went on, “Kei wants you to go.”

A week ago, this might have irritated me, even baffled me. But Kei was ultimately the reason I still had a contract with Hanahaki Records at all. He’d been counseled by his little team - Kagami, Hanagure, and Asa-chan - and asked if he wanted me to stay and keep making music for him. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure they should have trusted him to decide what was best for his well-being… Not when his decision was to keep me on. But apparently, even given the opinions of those opposing it, Kei had been adamant that I stay. Hearing that felt… strange. Sure, he was a machine and probably didn’t know any better. But a machine shouldn’t have felt any sense of loyalty to me, either. Regardless, the fact was that I was still Kei’s composer… Because that’s what Kei wanted.

“I… guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to go with him, anyway,” I said slowly. “You have to have someone set up his equipment and sync him with the sound gear… Make sure his music’s playing properly and all.”

Hanagure nodded emphatically as I spoke. “Exactly! You have five songs for him so far, right? That’ll be perfect for his time slot. So make sure you decide what order he’ll sing them in… And see if you can run through some basic Q and A things, will you? You know enough about that whole business… Besides, you’ve practically expanded Kei’s persona all by yourself. He’s actually down with Nomura today finalizing his stage choreography. Why don’t you pay them a visit?”

“Hold on - go back for a second.” I leaned forward in my seat, brow furrowing. “What did you mean, _expanded his persona?_ ”

“I can’t be the only one who sees it, Izaki,” he shrugged. “Kei’s followers have already developed a vision of who he is purely based on his appearance and the lyrics you write for him. You’re half of his entire identity at this point. So develop it further - get him to show that identity to his interviewers.”

“I’ll, uh… see what I can do.”

_“Lonely Doll Kei.”_

That was what social media had decided he was. I checked it out as soon as my meeting with Hanagure was done, deathly curious about exactly how my music had influenced Kei’s image. And it had. 

My songs were almost always written to show a side of Kei that Kei would never understand - the absence of a beating heart, the lack of understanding of human emotion, and often just the romanticization of having a cold android’s body. Idoloids didn’t sing about those things. The entire point of them was to be more human. But apparently, this new take on the entire Idoloid aesthetic had been a breath of fresh air to people.

“He’s so cute! Don’t you think his eyes look sad even when he’s smiling?”

“When he sings, all I want to do is hold him…”

“He’s like a ball-joint doll!”

Hanagure had been absolutely right. Everywhere, Kei’s fan base had created an image of Kei from his songs and videos alone - the image of a tragic, lonely doll desperate to feel love. It was almost fascinating. Was this the image I’d been trying to project? 

Either way, I could almost see the potential for him to embody that persona. It was something I could work with.

It was an odd feeling, I thought, knowing that Kei had somehow become my personal project.

Kei had been running through dance routines all day by the time I came down to see him, and Nomura was getting ready to leave. I told her to leave Kei so I could talk him through some of the questions I thought the NK group would ask him. He sat wearing one of his new video outfits, thankfully less scanty than the other, but only in that it had long sleeves and full-legged tights. I sighed and got comfortable cross-legged on the floor in front of his seat. 

“All right,” I said. “This Saturday, you’re going to be on TV. You heard about that?”

He nodded, smiling brightly. “Hanagure-san told me. I’m going to sing the music Izaki-san made. Lots of people will hear it.”

“Yup. Lots of people. And lots of people want to know who you are,” I told him. “They’re going to ask you things and you’ll have to know how to answer them. And some of those answers are going to be a little made-up.”

“How come?”

“Because people will like you better if you say things that make them happy when they think about you,” I said. Truthfully, I thought the whole thing was a bit ridiculous, too. But if Kei was honest, he might not line up with the image people had of him, and… at least to the record company, that was what was most important during all this. “People have seen you dance and sing, but they don’t know what kind of… _person_ you are. But they have an idea who you _might_ be. And it’ll be good to feed that idea.”

Kei was swinging his feet gently under his chair, a difficult task with the length of his legs. His boots kept scuffing the floor. “Who’s the person I might be?” he asked.

“We’ll find out,” I said simply. “So I’m going to ask you questions and we’ll see how you answer… And we’ll adjust accordingly. Okay?”

“'Kaaaaaay.”

I sighed and scrolled through my device, checking the notes I’d made. “All right. Kei, how old are you?”

The android’s head listed to the side, his smile persistent. “I was made six months-“

“Wrong.”

The tilt increased. “But it’s not wrong.”

“Not technically wrong,” I agreed. “But not what they want to hear. According to the sheet Snow-Maiden released on their website, you’re designed to be about twenty-one. So we’re going with that. Kei, how old are you?”

Kei’s eyes gleamed. “I’m twenty-one years old.”

“There you go.”

“People want me to lie, Izaki-san?”

“I’d like to stick to half-truths or things that you could reasonably be expected to think,” I muttered, scanning my notes. “But yeah. Some of the things you’ll say aren’t true. What would you say if they asked what your favorite dessert was?”

“I can’t eat food, Izaki-san,” he replied. 

“Yep. And we’ll admit that. But instead, you’ll say…” I paused, trying to decide on the presentation. Lowered eyes, a shy smile, fingers teasing at the mouth. “‘I’ve never tasted sweets… I wish I knew what would be good.’ Something like that.”

The wide eyes regarded me carefully. “Izaki-san, were you pretending to be me?”

“Um… yeah. For demonstration.”

“You’re not very good at it.”

“Yeah, well… okay. Oh, here’s one. Kei, is there anyone special in your life?”

The eyes narrowed with the spread of his smile. “Izaki-san!”

Feeling a twinge of heat in my face, I frowned. “No,” I sighed. “You can’t say something like that. When they ask if you have a special someone, they want to know if you’re in love with someone.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “I understand. It’s Izaki-san.”

“No… it’s not. And anyway, you can’t tell them you’re in love with anyone. Your fans don’t want to know that you have someone you love.”

Kei’s confusion seemed to deepen. “Why not?”

I sighed again, running a hand through my hair. “It’s… complicated. Your fans want you to love them. If you’re in love with someone already, then they won’t see you that way. So you should say something like… ‘I don’t know what love feels like. It sounds wonderful… I hope one day, I'll meet someone who can show me.’”

When I met Kei’s eyes again, they were large, searching… as if looking for something in me. “But I do… love you, Izaki-san.”

I wasn’t sure if I should even acknowledge this. It couldn’t possibly be true. As far as I was aware… no matter how _sophisticated_ artificial intelligence had gotten, something like love wasn’t just ones and zeroes. But even bypassing that, I could still let the thing down, even if he did believe it.

“Kei… I already have someone I love.”

I didn’t look up at Kei’s face… but his legs had stopped moving. “Izaki-san is in love with someone?” he asked.

“Yeah. I am.”

“Who… are they?”

My jaw tightened. “You don’t know them, Kei. You never will.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?” I groaned. “Why… why do I have to keep answering you?”

For once, he was quiet. I breathed out slowly, holding my own hands to stop the tremor.

“He… isn’t around anymore, Kei. He died. Two years ago.”

The seconds passed. Kei still didn’t speak. I looked up at him to see that the expression on his face hadn’t changed. 

“Even though he isn’t here…” he said slowly. “He’s still the person you love?”

“You don’t stop being in love just because that person is gone, Kei,” I said bitterly. “That’s just… how love is. That person is going to be important to me no matter how long he’s…” 

It was at this point that I realized my hands were shaking hard, even squeezed together. Why was I telling Kei all this? What did it matter to him? How could I expect a machine to understand how I felt, to understand love at all? 

The android stood up, then sank down to a crouch in front of me. Slender hands fell over mine and held tight. I stared down at them, startled, then up into the face of the Idoloid gazing back at me with this empty, sorrowful look in the eyes. 

“How do you stop?” he asked, voice filled with worry. “How can you… stop being in love?”

The anger sputtered at the base of my neck. I forced my eyes away. “You don’t, Kei,” I told him. “That’s not something you get to decide.”

The hands lingered for a moment, then slipped away. Kei wrapped his arms around his knees and stared blankly down at the floor, blue fringe obscuring the silvery gleam. 

I sighed and returned to my notes. “Okay. Let’s move on…”

It was an odd bit of inspiration. Kei had half an album’s worth of hard rock songs to sing now, but I’d been trying to write him something soft and melodic to break things up, and Kei’s strange and misguided thoughts on love became the basis. I toyed around with the lyrics only once while he was hooked up, the day before his TV appearance. The song wasn’t going to be ready by then. 

_“... Make me understand  
Why love is the way it is.  
I’m malfunctioning,  
Loving someone I cannot have.  
Disconnect my mouth from my heart  
Before I confess and suffer for you._

_Because they say ‘love is painful’  
And I know what they meant now.  
But if I shut off the circuits to my heart  
Will the pain even stop?  
I want to forget the words you said  
Forget I ever cried your name.”_

I’d just started adjusting Kei’s tone after doing a lyric runthrough when I noticed him behaving strangely again. The Idoloid’s head was bowed, his hands vaguely resting at his chest and… trembling. 

“Kei…” I reached over reluctantly and stroked his hair, avoiding the wires in his ear. “Hey… Kei. Is something wrong with your hands?”

His head lifted at my words, wide eyes slowly moving to me, then down to his own shaking hands. The shaking slowed and stopped, and he pressed them hard to his breast. “Izaki-san’s… music,” he murmured. “It hurts. It feels good, but… it hurts. It hurts when I sing these words.”

I felt my brow furrow. “Are you still damaged? Can you check for malfunctions?”

Kei’s irises flexed and stared into space. After a moment, he shook his head. “Systems are… normal. There’s nothing. Why does it… hurt so much?” Slender arms wrapped around himself, knees bouncing like a nervous tic. “Izaki-san. It hurts. Take it out. Take it out.”

“Take… take what out?” I rolled my chair over in front of Kei, who was now rocking in his seat with his eyes wide and unfocused. I seized him by the shoulders, but found his motions too strong to quell with my hands - it was like his motors were moving on their own. “Kei! Stop. It’s alright. Nothing’s hurting you!”

Kei pushed back against my hands with a jerking movement. His arms suddenly released each other and raised to his cheeks, fingers creeping to his ear and the plugs. I thought I’d finally gotten a grip on him when he wrenched out of my hands and doubled up, nearly tucking his head between his knees. 

Cold panic was starting to run up my spine. I struggled to understand what was going on. Had I done this? What was happening to him? I debated going to get someone to help fix him, but would they just think I’d broken him again? _Had_ I broken him? 

And all at once, I heard Kei’s voice pour out in song from between his thighs.

_“- malfunctioning - someone I cannot - disconnect - from my heart -”_

I was doused in icy adrenaline. The disjointed, unpolished song was spilling out of Kei in bursts like he was trying to hold back the gush of a broken dam. 

_“- confess and suffer - painful - I know - shut off - my heart - will the pain - stop -”_

It was the song. The song was doing this to him, somehow, inexplicably. I reached for the wires sticking out of the side of Kei’s head, then stopped - that wouldn’t cut it off. Where was it? Once I ran these songs through him, they were stuck in his programming. What, then? How do I -

_“- I want to forget - forget - your name -”_

In a rush, I moved back to my laptop and frantically tried to pull up the access window for Kei’s memory storage. It had to be there. If I just - the temp file for my song was right there, right at the top, the last thing he saved -

_“- forget - loving - someone i - cannot have -”_

I clicked on the file and deleted it. 

The effect was instantaneous. Kei stopped moving, stopped singing at once. It was such an inconsequential thing, just removing this file from his internal memory… How could that have been affecting him that badly? It was like my song had been a virus. Heart still pounding, I rolled back over to Kei and tried to lift him back into a sitting position. He was nearly limp, his eyes still wide and mouth still hanging open mid-syllable, but the irises were contracted shut - I didn’t even know they could do that. I took a shaky breath and pulled him close, lying his head on my shoulder so I could remove the wires from his head and pop open the panel at the base of his neck. His power button and charging cable port were here. I’d been shown how to reset Kei only once before. I just hoped it would help this time. I pushed and held the little button in for a few seconds before feeling Kei go limp in my arms. 

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Fuck. Shit. Why did you have to do this now? We were starting to _get_ somewhere.”

Predictably, the Idoloid’s lifeless body didn’t answer me. I sighed and clicked his power button again, shutting the panel as I felt him stir, then sat him back up in his chair.

Kei’s eyes were closed as his systems began booting up and reactivating. As far as I was aware, hard resets didn’t damage him… Though it might have fucked up whatever program he was running at the time, if any at all. It was a full minute before I saw the telltale flection of his chest that preceded his eyes opening. He focused on nothing, adjusting to the light, then looked up at me… and smiled. 

“Good morning, Izaki-san,” he said serenely. “How come I’m in the recording room? Am I going to sing for you now?”

I exhaled slowly, sinking down in my own seat. Whatever I’d done, between deleting the song file and the reset, it seemed to have wiped Kei’s memory of the entire day, too. That was… fine. Nothing serious had been lost. 

“No. We’re not going to…” I hesitated, watching Kei’s smile widen. “... Yeah. All right. Why don’t you sing whatever you like for now, Kei? That’ll be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah... They're kinda like Vocaloids but not quite, so it's hard for me to put this into a vocaloid fandom. The Idoloids are more of a comment on the idol industry in Japan and Korea in general, as cold, unfeeling machines that could keep up to the stress without any problems. 
> 
> There are UTAUs that Kei's voice is based off of, but I don't want to link any as I don't have their makers' permission to use them in a fictional work like this. 
> 
> I hope you guys like angst. That's all we're getting. I don't know how the story ends yet, but I do hope to finish it.
> 
> Thanks for taking a chance on a totally unknown work.


End file.
